


Terror of the (un)Known

by orphan_account



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Blood, Child Death, Death, Disease, F/M, Genderswap, Gore, Oral Sex, Plague, Vaginal Sex, cosmic horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 17:35:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 46,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19067377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Holly Conrad stepped out into the street, and she knew that something was different.





	Terror of the (un)Known

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure: I wrote this in April. Before... well, everything else. I didn't change anything, because I worked very hard on it, but... I wouldn't have written it this way now.

Holly Conrad stepped out into the street, and she knew that something was different. 

She couldn’t tell what it was, exactly - as a member of the order of the Plague Doctors, she was wearing her mask, peering out at the world through those glass eyes. Everything… seemed the same, and yet. 

And yet.

Something was off. Different. 

She walked through the streets, which were like the ones that she knew - they probably _were_ the ones that she knew, and she was just being hit with a bout of paranoia. That was a thing that happened with Plague doctors sometimes - too much time spent amongst the various unguents and chemicals used in treatments, breathing in all those fumes. Everything _looked_ normal - there was the lady selling apples, there was the little boy who ran errands, there were the cats, the horses, the sparrows. All was as it should have been. 

So why was she so on edge?

There was a woman waiting for her, at the door to her practice. “We’re not open yet,” Holly told the woman. Something about the woman’s face was familiar, but just out of reach - it was going to annoy Holly, but so was everything else. Just another thing to add to the _wrongness_ of everything. 

“When will you be open?” The woman looked back at Holly - she had a narrow face, with a veritable mane of curly dark hair spilling around it. She was shifting from foot to foot, her hands rubbing together, then smoothing over her apron.

“Shortly,” said Holly, “although there is a regular physician down the road, and a midwife, if you’re in need of anything like that.”

“No, no, I need to speak to a Plague Doctor,” said the woman, and she was looking even more antsy now. 

Holly bit back a sigh. Some people were convinced that the Plague Doctors held the secret to immortality - probably because most people couldn’t tell them apart. It was one reason why they made a point of sending Plague Doctors of different heights to replace other ones. It kept from those kinds of rumors.

“Is there any particular reason why you have a need to talk to one of our order?” Holly was still standing in front of the door to her office, trying not to look too impatient. 

“It’s… it’s a problem,” the woman said, “a complicated problem.”

“Well, we’ll be open in half an hour,” said Holly, and she unlocked the door. 

Thankfully, the woman didn’t follow Holly in, just kept loitering by the door. There was something strange about the way she moved, as if she wasn’t used to her body doing… whatever it was doing. 

_Please don’t let her be possessed,_ thought Holly as she took off her outer coat and adjusted her gloves. _I don’t want to deal with a possession first thing in the morning._

People mostly went to the priests about possessions, but you got the occasional misguided soul. Or desperate one. A Plague Doctor could pry a particularly unpleasant demon out without killing the host, but the host was usually forever changed after that. The last man Holly had exorcised had ended up with a face that had melted like wax, then reformed. He appeared almost normal… as long as you didn’t look too closely. 

Possession always made Holly nervous, even if she could deal with it - she’d much rather deal with some other malady. Although better possession than some of the other… weirder things she’d had to deal with. She’d only ever had one lycanthrope come to her for treatment, thank all the gods that weren’t. The woman outside had the same sort of anxious energy, which was leaving Holly’s own stomach in knots.

But one thing at a time. 

She got water from the pump in the courtyard, she arranged the instruments. It was only when she’d gone through her whole morning routine that she opened the door. The woman was still there, although she looked even more anxious than before, as if it was possible. She nearly bawled Holly over, in her rush to get indoors.

“I think -” the woman began.

“I need to get your information first, before we discuss anything,” Holly interrupted. This at least was familiar. So many patients were in the habit of dropping all of their problems at her feet, before she’d even had the chance to metaphorically roll her sleeves up and get things started. 

“Is this for payment?” The woman looked stricken, and Holly took pity on her. 

“No,” Holly assured her. “Any treatment from us is free. If you pay taxes, than you’ve paid for your treatment.”

“Oh,” said the woman, and she looked relieved. The anxiety was still keeping her shoulders around her ears, and she looked fit to vibrate out of her skin.

“Can you read and write?” Holly tried to keep her voice gentle.

“Yeah, I can read and write,” said the woman. “Do you have any… papers or whatever for me to fill out?”

“Yes, hold on a moment,” said Holly, going to shuffle through a stack of papers. She handed them over to the woman, who sat down in the chair on the other side of the desk, frowning down at the paper in her lap, fiddling with the pen that Holly had given her. 

Holly sat down, looking across the table at the woman as she wrote. She was chewing on her lower lip, and she’d occasionally tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. She seemed… ill at ease, for lack of a better way of putting it, as if her body didn’t fit, or she wasn’t used to it. That _was_ usually a sign of possession, come to think of it, although there were plenty of people in the world who were just awkward. 

Holly could just hope it was awkward.

“Um,” said the woman, “I have, um, I have a problem.”

“Evidently,” Holly said, “since you’re here.” She was trying not to be snarky - she really was! But she’d always had a bit of a sarcastic streak to her, and it just got worse when she was nervous. She never should have been so ambitious as to have a private practice. It left her alone with strange people who possible had demons in them. 

“I don’t… don’t know which name to use,” the woman said. 

“Did you lose your memory?” Holly rested her elbows on the table, and resisted the urge to rub her temples.

“Not as such, though,” said the woman. “But my… the name I’m thinking of is unsuitable.”

“Write down the unsuitable name, regardless,” said Holly, “and we’ll figure it out from there.”

“Right,” said the woman, and then she was writing industriously, the tip of her tongue sticking out, her hair fluffing out around her like an angry cat’s. When she was finished, she handed the paper back to Holly, and looked anxiously into Holly’s face.

Well, more accurately, she looked into Holly’s mask, but that was Holly’s face, as far as she was concerned.

“So… what seems to be the problem?” Holly rested her chin in her hands, the leather of her gloves creaking as she laced her fingers together. 

“This is going to sound crazy,” the woman began.

Holly rolled her eyes, grateful for her mask. She didn't know what she’d do without it - she’d been wearing it out every day since she was sixteen, and didn’t even remember how to school her facial expressions anymore. 

“I’m not a woman,” said the woman. 

Holly frowned, leaning forward. “You mean you feel you’re in the wrong body?” She’d met a few people like that - there were a few treatments for that sort of thing, usually reserved for those who had the money for it. Holly had done the treatment for particularly monied houses. This woman wasn’t presenting it the way Holly was used to it - such people usually seemed resigned to their fate, instead of the frantic, anxious energy that was emanating from the woman across from her.

“No, this is my body,” said the woman, and she pulled her hair back, giving Holly the first good look at her face - it was narrow, with a pointed chin, and big, hazel eyes. There was a scar going through one eyebrow. “I got that when I was three, and I fell off of a box in my parent’s kitchen.” She pointed at the scar. “I’ve got… other scars, all in the same places. Except this _isn’t_ me. I’m not a woman. I’m a man. I’m a man, my name is Daniel Avidan, and I’m… I’m not supposed to be like this.” She looked like she was on the verge of crying, which sent a little jolt of panic up Holly’s spine. She’d never been any good with other people’s feelings.

“What makes you think that you’re not in the right body?” Holly settled for the Doctor Voice - she was good at putting that one on, even if she always felt like a fraud as she did it. 

“I didn’t _say_ I’m not in the right body,” the woman said, and her lower lip was beginning to wobble. She didn’t look like a pretty crier - her chin was wrinkling up, and her eyebrows were meeting in the middle. “I said… I’m not a woman. I’m Daniel Avidan.”

“Daniel -”

“Call me Dan.”

“Dan,” said Holly, “I don’t know what I can do to help you. I don’t entirely understand what the problem is.”

“I woke up this morning, in my lodgings,” said Dan, “and they were… they were still my lodgings, except they _weren’t_ , because they’re full of women’s clothing. I’m not a woman. I’m a musician, but from what I could see of the… stuff around, I’m a barmaid here. And when I got dressed, I knew that this was my body, except it’s _not_ my body, because i’m not a woman. This is a person who I’m not. It’s like I’ve… I’ve fallen into someone’s life, except this person has had almost the exact same life as me. Only female.” And now she was crying, ugly, snuffling crying into her hands, and then she was wiping her nose on the back of her hand, her eyes red rimmed. There was a line of snot from her nose to her chin, and Holly wordlessly offered her black handkerchief. 

Dan blew her (his? What was the proper protocol for this kind of thing?) nose, and snuffled again, then sighed. “I know there’s that nasty sickness going around right now, in the public hospitals, and if I went there, they’d just lock me up or drug me, and I don’t need that, I just need to _fix_ this.” 

“You were worried about catching a sickness, so you came to a Plague Doctor?” Holly’s tone was flat. Admittedly, the Plague Doctors hadn’t had to deal with any kind of plague in more than a century, but… still. Plague Doctors methods (magic, alchemical, and things far stranger than that) kept the Plague at bay. As a result, actual Plague Doctors hadn’t had to deal with the likes of the plague that had brought about their order in the first place.

The last big sickness had been an outbreak of diphtheria, five years earlier, and that had been next to nothing compared to the old days, according to her old mentors. Admittedly, _nothing_ was as bad as the old days, according to her mentor, but still. 

“You’re known for curing the weird shit,” said Dan. “This is weird shit. Really weird shit. I don’t know what to do about it, because… what if it’s permanent? What if I’m really a woman, but I went crazy and _thought_ I lived the last thirty something years as a man.”

“So what are you hoping for me to do?” Holly leaned back, resisting the urge to reach under her mask and rub her eyes. She was already getting a headache - something strange was going on. That same… wrongness that had nagged her in the street. Maybe it was just a dumb hunch, but she’d learned to trust her hunches. They had saved her life before - helped her identify a poisoned well, helped her find the source of the poison. 

“I don’t know,” said Dan, “but my parents always said that Plague Doctors will save you, when you’ve got an unsolvable problem.” 

Holly sighed. It was too early in the morning for this. 

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “This doesn’t sound like a physical malady, which is what I treat. I can use magic or alchemy to see if you’re healthy, but this doesn’t sound like a health thing.”

“Could you check if I’m in the right world? Is that a thing? Are there other worlds? Is that a thing?” Dan looked anxious, rocking back and forth. “I can’t… I can’t think of anything else.” 

“Before I do anything else,” said Holly, “I would need to examine you. Your mind and your body.” 

“How would you examine my mind?” Dan was eyeing her suspiciously now, hands rubbing together. 

“I am a Plague Doctor,” Holly said. “It’s what we do.” Not strictly true, but she had a right to her trade secrets as much as anyone else did.

“Well,” Dan said, “my father always said to trust the Plague Doctors, so I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it.” Dan shot Holly a smile, and it was dazzling with its sincerity. 

“Right,” said Holly, rubbing her hands together. “Then let us get started.”

* * *

Holly did everything, even the things she didn’t normally bother with.

She took urine, blood, and stool samples, mixing them all with various powders, setting some things on fire, taking notes on the flames and the smoke. She tested Dan’s breath for magic, Dan’s hair for heavy metals, Dan’s voice for enchantment. There was nothing alchemical at all - no potion in Dan’s blood or spit or piss, no imbalance in Dan’s humors. Dan’s eyes tracked the candle Holly waved in front of them, Dan’s head turned at the sound of snaps, Dan’s knee kicked when tested with a hammer. There weren’t any devil marks or numb spots on Dan’s skin, no inexplicably hairy patches. Dan’s breasts were small and soft, Dan’s quim was healthy and fertile (according to the tests Holly ran). 

The uneasiness in the back of Holly’s mind was a dull roar by now - she _knew_ this body, even if she didn’t know how she knew. But she knew there was a scar along Dan’s side (“fell out of a tree when I was five,”) and that Dan had a delicate stomach. Dan’s eyes looked so familiar, but Holly had absolutely no memory of ever knowing this strange woman. 

By the time Holly was finished, she was well and truly flummoxed. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” she told Dan, as Dan got dressed. “I’ve got many patients who would kill to have health as good as yours.”

Dan made a face. “And yet.”

“You feel something is wrong,” Holly said. She’d met a few people like that - people who _insisted_ something was wrong with them, regardless. But still… that sense of wrongness was still twisting in her gut like a snake, and she had to do _something_ about it. She’d never been let down by her gut before.

"If you come back later today, when I'm doing seeing my other patients, we can go talk to my mentor at the university?" Holly was fully aware that she was engaging in the long time Plague Doctor tradition of "making it somebody else's problem," which she'd always sworn she'd never do. But what _could_ she do? At least her mentor might have a better handle on it - he had more experience, after all. 

"Will you be there with me?" Dan looked at her with wide eyes, still teary. Dan was clutching Holly's handkerchief, twisting it between long, narrow fingers anxiously. It had been in Dan's hand for the entirety of the examination. 

"I'll go with you," Holly said, against her better judgement. 

"Would it be... would it be alright if I helped you? Around here, I mean. I can't bear to see all of my friends when I look like this." Dan snuffled, nose beginning to run. Oh joy. More crying. 

Holly sighed. "I can't have you in the room when I'm with other patients," she told Dan. "Doctor-patient confidentiality."

"I can run errands for you," said Dan. Her face had a slightly manic edge. "Please? I don't... I don't know how to _be_ a woman. I don't know how to... y'know, walk the streets, do any stuff like that." 

Holly resisted the urge to press her face into the top of the table, which was a bad sign. It was going to be one of Those days, and she didn't know how she'd deal with it. 

"I can clean for you," Dan said unexpectedly. "Your waiting room, things like that?"

"Right," said Holly. "You do that." She said it more to get Dan out of her hair than because it was actually a thing that was needed. Her next patient was due in about fifteen minutes, and she needed to get assorted things... well, sorted.

"You won't regret this," said Dan, and one hand grabbed Holly's, pumping it up and down. "Thank you!"

 

* * *

 

The day was busy, astonishingly busy. A few different people came in complaining of "something feels wrong," but nobody had anything as blatant as Dan. 

Dan, in turn, stayed around all day. At one point she (and was that the proper pronoun? For all that Holly saw Dan as a woman, there was _obvious_ discomfort over it) braved the terrifying outdoors, and brought Holly lunch, which was appreciated. Dan even remembered that Plague Doctors were all vegetarians, and had gone over to the bakery Holly was fond of, to bring her a slice of vegetable pie.

Holly shoved her mask up to bare her mouth, and caught Dan staring at her. She rolled her eyes again. 

"I, uh, I know how hard it can be to find vegetarian food," Dan said earnestly, and Holly noted that Dan also had a piece of vegetarian pie. "I don't eat red meat."

"Any particular reason why?" Holly took a bite of her pie - leeks, onions, and potatoes, all baked in a flaky crust. 

Dan shrugged. "Always had a sensitive stomach." A pause, filled with chewing. "So what are we doing?"

"We're going to talk to my mentor," said Holly. 

"Does your mentor have some kind of experience with this kind of thing?" Dan's face was hopeful.

"I don't know anyone who's ever experienced this kind of thing before," Holly said, and took another bite. She was always faintly antsy, having her mask up like this - it wasn't like Dan could see her face, and there weren't any contaminants in the room, but... still. 

Plague Doctors took their masks off to sleep, and in the safe rooms of the university or their homes. Otherwise, they were always on. Things had gone lax since the last great Plague, but... well, she was still a Plague Doctor! There were standards to maintain. 

"So why are we going to your mentor?" 

Holly took her last bite of her pie, then pulled her mask back in place, adjusting to the straps so they were snug across the back of her head. "Because I don't _think_ you're mad, but if you are, he can deal with it."

"Why don't you think I'm mad?" Dan looked at her with bright, thoughtful eyes. 

Holly leaned back in her chair, ticking off on her fingers. "You don't have the look about you - you're dressed normally, you're washed, you're not talking to nothing. All of your story makes sense, and you don't seem to be actively distressed by anything other than your sex." 

Dan nodded.

"I trust my gut. My gut says you're not mad. I trust my gut a good deal more than anything else, what with one thing and another. You haven't told me any other delusions, such as that you're really the Prime Minister or were a King in some past life -"

"Is that, like, a thing that people do?" Dan interrupted. 

"It's been known to happen," Holly allowed. "Usually those people are pretty harmless, but... well." 

"I feel like I'm missing something else," said Dan.

Holly bit her lip... and then spoke. It was probably unwise to do so, but she had never been particularly gifted in forethought. "I've been feeling like something is... off since I got up this morning," she told Dan. "I don't know what it is, but the symptoms you're discussing sound enough like... whatever this feeling happens to be that I figured I might as well pursue it." 

"Oh," said Dan. "What kind of... wrongness?"

Holly shrugged. "It's complicated," she said, because... well, how to even describe it? 

"I'm good at understanding complicated," said Dan. "C'mon. I'm one of the People of the Book. We _thrive_ on complicated!"

Holly snickered in spite of herself. "Are you Jewish, then?"

Dan nodded, and he looked faintly wistful for a moment. "I do wonder if my family remembers me as... well, me, versus as whoever this life belongs to."

Holly nodded. 

"What does your mentor study?" Dan was clearly grasping at _something_ to talk about. 

"The movement of things," said Holly. "He studied other things as well - part of being a Plague Doctor is obviously related to treating the body and the mind. But he had an interest in studying... well, other things. So he did."

"Do Plague Doctors often do that?" There was a grease spot stuck to Dan's face, and it was beginning to bug Holly. She reached over with her napkin, and she dabbed it away. Dan, unexpectedly, flushed. 

 

"Do what?" Holly folded up the handkerchief that she'd dabbed at Dan's face with, and leaned back in her chair.

"Study multiple things," said Dan. "I thought all you guys did was, y'know, bleed people and cure them of weird things."

"There's more than three hundred and sixty five days in a year," Holly said. "There's as many as _five_ where we're not busy solving weird diseases." She was faintly surprised at how bitter she sounded. Then again, she was very tired.

"What is your specialty?" There was a spot of grease on Dan's dress, and Holly itched to blot it with the handkerchief. 

"I study birds," said Holly. "Birds and history."

"That's a thing that you can... study?" Dan looked surprised. "Birds, I mean. History is... history. I don't see the _point_ of studying it, but I suppose you can learn from it."

"Why wouldn't birds be a thing you could study?" The familiar defensiveness was beginning to slide down the back of Holly's neck, like cold water. 

"Because they're... birds," said Dan, wearing a thoughtful expression. "What can you learn from a bird?"

"Flight," Holly said. "The way their bodies work. And...." She made a vague hand motion.

"And?" Dan looked interested. 

"I... I think that it's important to know things, even if they're not _beneficial_ ," Holly said slowly. "Even if there's no other reason to study it than to know about it. I think that just... knowing things is important. There's so many things _to_ know, and I think that knowing them is important." She trailed off, embarrassed. "Sorry."

"Don't be," Dan said, in a faintly awed voice. "I've never heard anyone sound so impassioned about the subject of studying things for the sake of studying them before."

Holly cleared her throat again. She was blushing very hard, behind her mask. She liked the way Dan was looking at her, and she wasn't sure what to make of that. 

Plague Doctors weren't _forbidden_ from taking lovers, per se, but they weren't allowed to get married. She had shared a bed with other trainees, before she'd donned her mask, but that had been a long time ago. She didn't have a preference as far as men or women went, but... well, to go to bed with someone who wasn't of the Order was as close to a sin as they ever got. Not that she wanted to go to bed with Dan. Bedding down with a patient was never a good idea. But Dan was looking at her with big, dark eyes, and she couldn't seem to stop blushing. 

"A lot of my fellows complained that nothing new had been discovered," Holly admitted. "So some of my interest in studying birds has less to do with me wanting to study things for the sake of studying them, and more to do with the fact that I like birds."

"It sounds nice, to be able to study something that you enjoy because you enjoy it," said Dan, sounding wistful.

"You said you were a musician," Holly pointed out. "That sounds like something you'd pursue because you enjoy it." 

Dan laughed - threw her head back and _laughed_ , exposing a smooth expanse of throat and a pointy chin. Dan's hair cascaded back, and Dan's whole face went squished up and ugly - endearingly so. Holly wanted to kiss Dan, and what did _that_ mean?

"Excuse me," said Holly. "I have a few more patients to see. Then we can go to the University."

"Right," said Dan. "And you're okay with me... just hanging around?"

Holly shrugged. "Just don't disturb my patients," she told Dan. 

"Right," said Dan. "Understood." 

Holly couldn't help but smile a bit, when Dan smiled at her. It was as if she had some kind of connection to Dan, a connection that she didn't entirely understand. Not understanding things always left her stomach in knots - it was one of the many reasons she'd become a Plague Doctor in the first place; to know. 

But now was not the time to ruminate on all of that. Now was the time to get things done. She rubbed her hands together, and she went to look in her appointment book, to check who she was seeing next. 

* * *

Holly came out of her office with a foggy head, rubbing her temples. Dan was sitting on the couch for patients, eating from a paper cone of chestnuts. Dan smiled when Holly walked in, and Holly smiled back. 

She didn't know what she'd do without the mask. 

"Hi," said Holly. 

"Hello," said Dan. 

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting," said Holly. "I need to finish cleaning up in here -"

"I already swept and dusted and put things away," Dan interrupted. "If that's what you meant."

"Oh," said Holly, with some surprise. "You did?"

"I did," said Dan, shrugging and looking embarrassed. "I didn't want to just sit around. And then I got bored, so I went to get something to eat. But I saved you some."

"Right," said Holly. "Thank you." She pushed her mask up, just enough to reveal her mouth, and she took a bite of a chestnut. It was thick and crumbly against her tongue, crunching between her teeth. 

"So what's your mentor like?" Dan stood up, hands rubbing together.

"He's... himself," said Holly, because it was hard to describe him. "He's got a very odd sense of humor, but nobody matches him, when it comes to the study of movement."

"Why did you study under someone whose specialty was motion, if you studied birds?" Dan watched as Holly grabbed her walking stick.

"Well," said Holly, holding on to the stick, "the reasoning is a bit... complicated."

The Council had reasoning that confused _everyone_ \- there were a few jokes going around that the way to get given a position on it was to be diagnosed with senility. 

"We've got a bit of a walk," Dan said, and offered Holly an arm. It looked out of place, coming from a smallish woman in a dress and an inexpertly tied apron. 

Holly was struck by just how... out of place Dan looked. Holly had been busy all afternoon, but now that she was thinking about Dan, there was something _off_ \- something that Holly was stuck on, and couldn't understand. She put her hand on Dan's arm, more for the novelty of it than for any other reason, and she locked the door behind her, making her way towards the university. 

Brian would be able to figure this out, hopefully. 

* * *

 

“So movement and history?” Dan prompted, as the two of them strolled arm in arm, towards the great bulk of the university in the distance. 

“Oh,” said Holly. “My Thesis Advisor said that, since history moves in circles, so too shall I study under the tutelage of someone who studied the movement of things.” 

Dan didn’t say anything for almost an entire block. Then; “that isn’t the answer that I was expecting?”

“I don’t think that’s the answer that anyone would expect,” Holly admitted. “They kept me with him when I doubled up to study birds, because birds move through the air, as do the people move through the world.” She did her best to attempt the accent that elder Plague Doctors put on, but didn’t have much luck. 

When you got to a certain age, you stopped treating the public, and you ended up spending all of your time around other Plague Doctors. The speech tended to get… weird. Well, no, tell a lie, the everything got weird, but the speech became the most apparent. They had their own language - mostly written, with a few spoken words here and there - and it was said to change a person. Holly had never seen one of the Council without a mask - very few had. 

“Holly?” Dan shook her arm, and Holly more or else came back to herself.

“Sorry,” said Holly. “Was lost in my own thoughts. Can you repeat the question, please?”

“I said,” said Dan, “it makes sense to me.”

“Does it?” Holly looked at Dan sidelong, one eyebrow up. Not that Dan would be able to tell, but still. 

“Well,” Dan said, in a thoughtful voice, “if you look at it a certain way, history _is_ just things… moving around. People, money, ideas….”

“Are you sure you’re a musician? You sound like a philosopher,” said Holly.

“According to the world at large, I’m a barmaid,” said Dan with a gusty sigh.

Holly patted Dan on the hand. “My mentor will be able to help,” she said, and she almost believed it.

* * *

The University of the Plague Doctors was vast. The visible parts of it took up the equivalent of three city blocks - there was a great wall surrounding the sprawling stone building, and a great moat around the edges of the wall. The moat had been a plague pit, once upon a time - when the majority of the city had died and all those who were immune had picked themselves up, the bodies had been removed from the pits, and put… elsewhere. 

Where?

That wasn’t for anyone who wasn’t in the Council to know - Holly had a few of her own suspicions, but she didn’t need to tell anyone that. For now, the outside of the University was surrounded by rushing water, endlessly circling it. There was an ingenious method involving drains and the push and pull of the river nearby, but Holly didn’t know much about that. She was an ornithologist and a historian, not an engineer. 

Dan gaped up, as they walked across one of the many drawbridges. “It’s so big.”

Holly nodded absently. “I grew up here,” she said. Which was more than she’d usually share, come to think of it, but she was still in that odd mood.

“What was it like?” Dan stared at her, naked interest in those big brown eyes.

“It was… itself,” said Holly, because what else was she going to say? _My parents were drunks, one day my neighbor grew tired of the sounds of the beatings and took me and gave me to the Plague Doctors. They didn’t hit me, at least, and fed me, and clothed me._ It wasn’t a very happy story, but it was her story. There were many stories that were much worse.

“Did they… were they good to you? The Doctors, I mean.” They were waiting in line, now - a whole line of Plague Doctors in their masks and hats and robes, holding packages or leading people by the hand. There was a man in front of them holding a baby, and the baby was fussing and waving its tiny fists in the air. Holly couldn’t see the man’s face - he was wearing the same type of mask that she was - but something about the set of his shoulders was… tense. 

“They raised me,” Holly said. “I learned a trade, I learned many useful skills.” 

“What about your parents?” Dan’s expression was open, guileless. 

“They had other things to worry about,” Holly said shortly. 

“Right,’ said Dan. 

There was a moment of awkward silence, then the man in front of them was being seen by a harried looking Plague Doctor at a desk in front of the door, taking notes. 

“I’m saying that this is my secretary,” the man in front of him said, as he bounced the baby. She recognized the voice - one of her former classmates, Jared. She’d have said hello, but he seemed distracted. 

“Your secretary is a baby? That sounds inefficient.” The Doctor at the desk had a dry, flat voice. Holly didn’t recognize it, but then again, it had been a while since she’d been back to the University. 

“She wasn’t a baby yesterday,” said Jared.. “She was a young woman yesterday. She’s just… an infant now.”

“That makes no sense,” said the Plague Doctor behind the desk. 

“I know,” said Jared. There was a ragged edge to his voice - he sounded like he was going to lose his temper. “That’s why I’m here.”

“What am I supposed to put that down as?” The Plague Doctor behind the desk looked down at his ledger, then up at Jared.

“I don’t know,” said Jared, “but please let me through. I need to talk to my mentor.” 

“What’s your mentor supposed to do? How do you _know_ that’s your secretary, and not just an infant that was left in your office?”

“Because she’s got the same birthmark,” said Jared, and then he was setting the baby down on the desk. 

The Plague Doctor behind the desk made an annoyed noise, and Holly couldn’t blame him - she wasn’t exactly _fond_ of babies either. Still, her ears were metaphorically pricked up. It was reminding her of the business with Dan, in an odd way.

Dan was watching, entranced. 

Holly glanced over her shoulder - there were a few Plague Doctors behind them, holding babies or bundles or leading people along with them. This was the gate of the consultations, although usually it wasn’t this busy. 

Maybe something odd was going on. 

“So,” the Plague Doctor behind the desk said, in a flat voice, “how did you _know_ that she had a birthmark on the inside of her thigh in the shape of a sickle?” 

There was a pregnant moment, and then Jared was picking up the baby, holding her to his chest. “Regardless,” he said stiffly, “I need to talk to my Mentor. Possibly even the Council.”

“Indeed,” said the Plague Doctor behind the desk. “And I don’t want this to be my problem anymore. I’m going to put this down as “temporal phenomena” and let the record show that I am in no way involved in this.”

Jared swore, apologized for swearing, signed the ledger, and was off into the bowels of the University.

The Plague Doctor behind the desk looked them up and down, the beak of his mask bobbing. His posture was very tired. “Yes?”

“My patient is convinced that… this is not their body,” said Holly, indicating Dan. 

“What do you mean, not her body?” The mask bobbed again, as the Plague Doctor looked Dan up and down. “A case of body dysphoria?”

“No,” Dan cut in. “It’s not… whatever that is. I just woke up today, and everyone else thought that I was a woman, and remembered me as a woman, but I will swear up, down, and sideways that last night I went to bed as a man, and I woke up as a woman.”

“So a mental illness?” The Plague Doctor was speaking directly to Holly now.

“No,” Dan insisted> “There’s been a… mistake.”

“I want to talk to my mentor,” said Holly, taking on her best Plague Doctor tone. It mainly meant “I know what I’m talking about and you don’t” - although it didn’t usually work on her cohorts. 

“What are they going to do about it?” The Plague Doctor behind the desk sounded at the end of his rope. 

“I don’t know,” said Holly, “but at least there can be two of us dealing with this, and not just me.”

“Right,” said the Plague Doctor behind the desk. “And what am I supposed to note this down as?”

“I don’t know,” said Holly. “You’re the one who takes the notes. Don’t you have your own code?”

“I have my own code for common things,” the Plague Doctor behind the desk groused. “Today has been nothing but making up new ones, and that takes _time_.” His voice was edging into a whine. 

“That sounds like a you problem,” Holly said, hooking her arm around Dan’s arm and walking into the door. 

“I’ll tell your mentor,” the Plague Doctor behind the desk called after them. 

“You do that,” Holly called back, dragging Dan along.

“How was he able to tell that was you?” Dan was boggling, eyes darting around. 

The University was a bit of a sight to behold. Holly had grown up here, it was true, but it had been months since she’d been back. 

The floor was tiled with images of death, and the skulls of renowned Plague Doctors were mounted on some of the pillars. Plague Doctors milled about, talking quietly amongst themselves, carrying books, going from one place to another. The whole place was loud with the swish of leather cloaks, and the whisper of mahy people trying to be quiet at once. 

Holly walked purposefully towards her mentor’s tower - he insisted on living at the top of a tower, because he was obstinate like that. There had been jokes about wizards, but they’d been the very edge of jokes. Holly suspected that he liked it up there because he didn’t want to deal with other people, but then again, what did she know?

Dan was panting next to her, still gaping around. It was the first time Holly had taken a patient in for a consultation - generally she consulted the other Plague Doctors around the city. But this… this felt odd. 

When in doubt, ask the expert. Inasmuch as Brian was an expert in.. .whatever this was.

* * *

Brian was sitting at his desk, and he was reading a book that had many pictures of spheres. He had a model of those same spheres on his desk, on some kind of weirdly jointed… something or other. Holly didn’t look too closely - she’d never really understood Brian’s weird experiments, just as he never fully understood her history research projects. 

“Brian?” She knocked on the door, then strode in. He’d never been one to stand for the formalities, anyway.

“Holly,” said Brian, and he turned his face up towards her. He was looking at her straight on, and she could tell he was glad to see her - his posture opened up. 

“I’ve got a strange case for you,” she told Brian. Dan crept up behind her, looking nervously around. One of Dan’s long fingered hands was clutching at Holly’s sleeve, and Holly tried not to get too annoyed at it. 

“How strange are we talking here?” Brian leaned back into his chair, the beak of his mask going from Holly to Dan.

“Tell your story,” Holly told Dan. “I’ll fill in any gaps if you think they’re important.”

She had a little folio of Dan’s medical information under one arm, and she placed it on the table now, for Brian to look through.

So Dan talked - Dan _babbled_ , talked about the day before, talked about waking up in the morning in a strange but familiar body, babbled about… well truthfully, Holly stopped paying attention. She made vague affirmative noises, sitting on one of Brian’s comfortable chairs, and she put her feet up. She’d been standing all day, being a Public Figure all day, and she was done for now. Flat out done. 

“And then I came here,” Dan said, after some time, and Holly came back to herself, more or less.

“So… can you corroborate any of this?” Brian had his chin in his hands, and was looking thoughtfully at Dan. 

“I can corroborate the parts that happened today,” said Holly. 

“I asked her to prove that I’m in the wrong world,” Dan said. “Is that a thing you could do?” 

“I don’t think so, no,” said Brian, and his voice was taking on the slightly far off tone it always got when he was pursuing some theory or another. “Why do you think you’re in the wrong world, and not that some small chemical in your brain is acting up and muddling with your humors?”

Dan paused, expression turning into one of pure, abject horror. “That’s… a thing I didn’t want to think of. I don’t know how I’d fix that.” 

“It is a difficult one,” said Brian. “Are you sure that this only started today?”

“I remember yesterday being a totally normal day,” said Dan. “I sang in a tavern, I flirted with a pretty lady, then I went home and slept. I woke up and everything was… different.” 

“You sing?” Brian perked up, just a bit, and Holly rolled her eyes behind her mask. Brian had a borderline _obsession_ with music. Sometimes it could get a bit ridiculous. 

“I do,” said Dan, then; “I did. I don’t know what to do with this voice.”

“I suggest you stay with Doctor Conrad for now, for observation,” said Brian. “If nothing else, we can take notes.”

“What?” Holly would have been embarrassed about how indignant she was, except it was Brian, and she was indignant. 

“Stay with Doctor Conrad,” Brian repeated. “For the week, at least.”

“What if I change back?” Dan’s voice was full of hope.

“We’ll still want to observe you,” said Brian. “This kind of change is relatively unheard of.”

“I don’t suppose I have a say in the matter,” Holly said glumly. 

“Not really, no,” said Brian, in a tone that could be read as cheerful. “Not as soon as you came to me for a consultation.”

“But I have other patients!”

“You can treat your other patients,” said Brian. “Just stay with each other.”

“I have -”

“You have plenty of room in your lodgings,” Brian interrupted. 

“I’m a man,” Dan interrupted. “You can’t ask me to share a room with a young lady!’

“Holly has a parlor,” Brian countered. “A parlor that you use only for bird keeping.”

“I’m not going to win this one, am I?” Holly’s voice was very tired.”

“Nope,” said Brian. “The quicker you accept it, the quicker you can start making plans.”

Holly gave a long sigh. “You’re the worst mentor,” she told Brian.

“I am the worst, ever,” Brian agreed. “The worst that ever existed. I am a demon.” 

"So you want Dan to live with me for... a week?" 

"A week," Brian agreed. "In your front room. Or your bedroom, if you so choose."

"Brian," Holly hissed, leaning forward, "Dan is a _man_! Sort of!"

"No sort of," Dan protested. "I'm shaped like this for now, but that doesn't mean I'm not a man!'

"You weren't bothered by having to sleep in the same room with a man when you were still living at the university," Brian pointed out. He rested his chin on his hand, and Holly would have bet her mask that he was smirking behind his own. 

"That's different," Holly groused.

"How is it different?" 

"Dan is a civilian," said Holly. "What if I need to take my mask off?"

"You know, the whole face taboo thing is thought to be a holdover when we thought that the bad vapors came from -"

"I know why there's a face taboo," Holly said, and she rubbed her temples. She was starting to get a headache. "I just... think it's safer this way." 

"Are you sure it's not just a sign of your own fear of intimacy?" 

"Brian," Holly said. "Please tell me how to deal with this problem." She indicated Dan, who looked faintly insulted to be referred to as a 'problem.'

"Live together for a week. Do a physical examination every day, take notes. Take notes on anything unusual you find. Report back to me." Brian handed the folio back to Holly. 

Holly took it. "Yes, sir," she said, because what else was she going to say? 

"So I'm staying with you for a week," said Dan, turning to Holly. "Does this mean that I have to spend all of my time with you?"

" _No_ ," Holly said with some finality. She didn't know how she'd be able to stand being around a stranger in her own home for a week, let alone a stranger underfoot. 

"Right," said Dan. "I don't... I don't want to return to my lodgings until all of this has sorted itself out." 

Holly nodded.

"It was good to see you," Brian told Holly. "Maybe try visiting more often."

"You have no problem visiting me when you need to," Holly protested.

Brian shook his head, the beak of his mask sweeping back and forth. "You are something, Holly," he told her. His voice was affectionate, although there was a note of tiredness in it. "Will you be needing anything else?"

"No, sir," said Holly. "If I may have leave to go?"

"One more thing," said Brian, and then he paused. "Dan," he said, turning towards Dan. 

"Yes?"

"Close the door, please." 

Dan did as instructed, then came back to stand next to Holly, arms crossed.

Brian took a deep breath, and he leaned back in his seat. His body language looked very tired, all of a sudden. Very tired, and very old. He wasn't an old man by anyone's standards - very smart, and viewed as an odd person in general, but not old by any means. Especially not for a Plague Doctor. 

Anxiety was beginning to bubble in Holly's stomach, twisting together like fishing line. She tried not to fidget too much, and kept the beak of her mask pointed towards Brian's. 

"There have been some... odd occurrences," Brian said slowly. 

"What kind of odd?" Holly's eyes darted towards Dan, although there was no way for Dan to know that. 

"Things changing," said Brian. He was rubbing his forehead through his mask, the leather of his gloves rasping gently against the leather of the mask.

"What kinds of things?" Holly put her hands in the pockets of her coat, her fists clenching in spite of herself. Something was happening. Tension was mounting and mounting in the air, strong enough to make her sick to her stomach. 

"There didn't used to be a river through the city," Brian said, and he sounded anxious as he said it.

"What?" Dan spoke up this time. "I grew up by the river. I remember it."

"What do you remember about it?" Brian's tone was sharp now.

"What do you mean, what do I remember about it?" Dan sounded surprised. 

"What do you remember about it," Brian said. "Tell me a memory about the river."

"It was... just a river," Dan said, frowning. "It was always there. By my house."

"Was it clean? Was it dirty? Did you ever fall in? Why did your parents choose to live next to a river?" Brian was leaning forward now, his elbows on the table. 

"It was just... there. It was a river. Rivers are just there sometimes." Dan faltered. 

"Holly," Brian said, "tell me something about the place where you grew up."

"You grew up here too," Holly protested. "What do you need to know -"

"I'm proving a point," Brian said. "Tell me something about when you were a small child, growing up here."

"Um," said Holly, then; "there was an old apple tree outside the window of the dormitory. And we'd... that is, my classmates and I would all sit under it, before an exam. It was said to be good luck, because apple wood can be used in certain types of good luck charms, and we didn't know if it would work, but with... with some exams, you never know. And some people carved their names into it. I never did, because I was afraid of hurting the tree for no reason." She was blushing now, as both Dan and Brian looked at her. Thankfully, they couldn’t see her face.

"Before I came to the University, I lived in the city," said Brian. "And I could tell you where to get the best pie, where the strongest tea is brewed, where my great-grandfather met my great-grandmother. And I have no memories of that river, other than the fact that it's there and it's always been there." 

"But... it's a river," Dan said. "Rivers don't just... appear."

Holly was beginning to understand where Brian was coming from, although the anxiety curdling in her stomach was getting stronger. 

"How many people drowned in the river, when you were growing up?" Brian was leaning further forward now, and his voice was intense. "You always have at least one child who falls in when the spring floods come up, and there aren't any railings around the edges. So how many children died? Anyone you know?"

"I don't... I don't remember anyone dying," Dan said. The frown was getting deeper, carving a thick line between Dan's eyebrows. 

"Holly, how many students in your class died?" The beak swinging back.

"Five," said Holly, promptly. 

"And how did they die?" 

"Two of them caught the summer fever, one got run over by a cart, two committed suicide."

"And nobody died of the river."

"No," said Holly.

"Think about that," said Brian. "And be careful."

"What do you... what does it all _mean_?" Dan's hands were together, the knuckles white. Dan had very large hands, with thick thumbs. Holly was staring at them, caught herself staring, and looked down at her feet. 

"I have my suspicions," Brian said, "but I don't entirely know what it is I'm suspicious _of_."

"Right," said Holly. 

"Take those notes," said Brian, "and come back in a week."

"Yes, sir," said Holly. 

"Do you really think that me and the river are linked?" Dan's face was uneasy.

"Well," said Brian, "I can't study the river the way I can study you."

"Right," said Holly. 

"Thank you, sir," said Dan. 

"We'll figure this out," said Brian, and his mask dipped forward, so that he was looking straight into Holly's face with his red smoked glasses. "We _will_."

"Yes, sir," said Holly. 

 

* * * 

 

"What did so many people in your class commit suicide?" Dan's tone was nervous, as the two of them walked towards Holly's house.

Holly shrugged. "The exams of the Plague Doctor are strenuous," she said. 

They were walking along the river, and she looked down at it, trying not to let suspicion cloud through her. It was a river. The water was muddy, and had a reddish tint to it from the iron rich clay. Although come to think of it, why was the river the only place in the city with red clay?

Some part of her mind was trying to fight against... whatever it was. _It's the river,_ shouted her rational mind. _It's the river, it's always been there. Look at the steps next to it, look at the worn path._ She had memories of walking along the river.   
And that was it, come to think of it. No memories of looking at it, of stopping to watch the birds on the river... actually, there _were_ no birds on the river. She remembered going to other cities, or places out in the country, and seeing storks, cranes, egrets, ducks. She'd never seen any living thing in or around the great, red-brown river that cut through the city like a gash. 

"Dan," said Holly, "do you like birds?" 

“I like them well enough,” said Dan. “I don’t know a lot about them.” 

“What kind of birds were around, when you were growing up?” They turned a corner, and were out of sight of the river. Some part of Holly relaxed, just a bit.

“I don’t know the names of them,” said Dan. “But… I remember little brown ones. And there were the pigeons, obviously - there’s always pigeons.” 

“There are always pigeons,” said Holly. “I love pigeons.”

“Do you race them?”

“I don’t race, no,” said Holly. “I just… like pigeons. I don’t see the need to breed them, since there are so many of them around. I try to take care of the sick ones or the injured ones, bu I don’t see the point of making _more_ pigeons.”

“When you say it like that,” said Dan, “I picture you in a workshop somewhere, putting together a pigeon like someone making a clock.”

That startled a laugh out of Holly, and Dan was looking at her with a delighted expression. 

“You know,” said Dan, “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you laugh.”

“I do laugh occasionally,” said Holly. “When there’s something funny.”

“I’ll have to step up my game,” Dan said cheerfully. 

Holly rolled her eyes, although Dan couldn’t see, then went back to her original point. “Do you like ducks? Do you remember them?” 

“I like ducks,” said Dan. “I don’t really know anyone who _doesn’t_ like ducks.” 

“Did you see ducks, when you were growing up?” Holly knew she was being silly, belaboring this point, and yet.

“A few times, yes,” said Dan. “My father took me to the park, we fed the ducks.” Dan’s face went a little soft with the memory.

“But not when you were at home? Looking out your window, did you see ducks?”

“No, not at home, why would… oh.” Comprehension dawned on Dan’s face. 

Holly was impressed in spite of herself - Dan was quicker on the uptake than one would think.

“Exactly,” said Holly.

“Huh,” said Dan, and then sighed. “But whatever.”

“I point out that, quite possibly, your memories have been tampered with and you respond with ‘whatever’?” Holly was scandalized in spite of herself.

“This morning I woke up without my prick, half a foot shorter, and everyone who I saw knew me by a different name,” Dan said flatly. “Quite frankly, a river suddenly always being there doesn’t seem to strange.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Holly admitted. 

Dan reached out, patting her on the arm. 

She resisted the urge to whack Dan in the shins with her walking stick. 

“It’ll be okay,” Dan said. “I have complete faith in you.” 

_I wish I did,_ thought Holly. 

 

* * *

 

They arrived at Holly’s residence - a small house with three rooms. The room that Dan was going to stay in was full of bird cages, the various inhabitants raucous when they saw Holly come in.

“Hello, everyone,” Holly said, her voice going high and sweet. “Hi. Did you miss me? I missed you.” She went from cage to cage, talking to everyone, fussing over them. She would clean the cages after she’d eaten - she had some bread and cheese, which wasn’t the best fare, but she’d live. She had to feed Dan as well, but one thing at a time.

“You have a lot of birds,” Dan said, sitting down on Holly’s very dusty sofa. It had come with the house. 

“As I said, I’m studying them,” said Holly. “It helps to have a lot of variety around.” She whistled at Paku, her parakeet, and he whistled back at her. 

“Do you think they like you better, because of your mask?” Dan leaned back, hands buried in curly hair. With an arched back, Dan’s breasts were on full display, and Holly tried not to look too close. 

She knew, logically, that her attraction to women wasn’t a bad thing. Attraction was attraction - she was a Plague Doctor, and beyond such earthly attachments, or so they claimed. Dan had an interesting face, and Holly wanted to keep looking at it. Which was an unusual train of thought for Holly - maybe she was spooked by the business with the river. 

“Since I’m imposing on your hospitality,” said Dan, “how about I get you dinner?”

“You don’t have to,” said Holly. She wanted to say yes - bread and cheese weren’t the most sustaining meals, especially when she was mulling over complicated thoughts. 

“Nonsense,” said Dan. “I’ll go get dinner, you… do whatever it is that you need to do.”

“Right,” said Holly. “There’s a good bakery, about two blocks down.”

Dan nodded, and gave a little fluttering goodbye wave, and then was off, in a rush of skirts and curly hair. 

 

* * *

 

Holly cleaned the cages before dinner - Dan was long enough that she had the time. It was an arduous process, but by the time everything was done, she sat back, full of the bone deep satisfaction that came from finishing a job. She was in the midst of feeding everyone when Dan came back, bearing two big pies.

“Hi,” said Dan, looking faintly sheepish.

“Hello,” said Holly.

“I got lost,” Dan admitted. “I kept forgetting the river was there, and ending up on the banks of it.”

“Right,” said Holly. Her suspicions were getting stronger. She wasn’t sure what it was that she was suspicious of, exactly, but it was very much there.

She rubbed her face, and wished she could take her mask off. If Dan wasn’t here, she would have. 

“I’m going to retire for the night,” she told Dan, which wasn’t strictly true, but Dan didn’t have to know that.

“Right,” said Dan, looking faintly crestfallen. Maybe hoping that Holly would want to stay up late talking, or something like that? 

“Good night,” said Holly, and she went into her bedroom, and closed the door. 

 

* * * 

Holly carefully took her mask off, staring at herself in the mirror as she always did. Her face always seemed _odd_ without it - her nose was too flat, her skin too pale. Admittedly, her face hadn’t been out in the sun for a _very_ long time, but still.

Her bedroom was safe - there were various alchemical symbols drawn on the door, the windows. Nothing could get in or out that she didn’t want to. 

Things didn’t smell like leather, and she sighed, taking off her boots, then her gloves, then her corset. She sat on her bed, chewing on a piece of vegetable pie, and she tried to wrap her mind around the strangeness. 

The river, which had always been there, was new. If she looked at maps, would they be there? What about if she talked to old timers? Something about it was flat out _resisting_ the urge to try to interrogate it. That made her interrogate it harder, because there was nothing in her mind that she would ignore.

She was so tired - it had been more peopleing than she was used to, and going back to the University always wore her out. Something about going back to the place she was _from_ , the way she wasn’t from anywhere else… something about seeing so many faces like her own. It was relaxing, in a weird way - Dan had been the odd one out, with a naked face.

And yet.

Holly chewed on her pie, and closed her eyes - the lights from her candle seemed to be too much, after wearing the smoked glass of her mask. There was something brewing - it was like the moment before a thunderstorm, where all of the hair on her body stood on end and the pressure seemed to build until her head began to throb.

She flopped onto her bed, feet dangling off of the edge, and she considered what she was going to do. How was she supposed to deal with any of this? Why did it have to be _her_?

_Because that’s how it goes,_ said the no-nonsense part of her mind, which sounded remarkably like her old anatomy professor. _We do not do the easy work, or the nice work. We are the ones who keep away the Plague, whatever that Plague happens to be._

“A Plague of strangeness doesn’t seem like something I can deal with,” she said, but she said it quietly. 

The room didn’t respond, and she sighed again, and got up to get ready for bed.

 

* * *

 

Holly woke up in the morning with a headache, her whole body on edge. Something felt... off, and she didn't know what it was, but it was there. When she stood up, her head spun, and she almost fell over. There was someone in the other room - she could hear them moving around - and her heart was in her throat. Why was someone in her spare room?

Memories from the day before came back, slowly, and Holly sighed, covering her face with both hands to try to get a hold of herself. She could do this. She'd be fine. Dan wasn't exactly the type of person that she spent time around (she didn't really have any type of person that she spent time around, when it came down to it), but... Dan wasn't objectionable. She got dressed, putting on her mask, her gloves, her everything, and she went into her other room. 

There was a man on her couch.

She screamed. 

The man jolted upright, fell off of the couch, and the birds took up the scream - some of them flapping, some of them screaming along with him. 

"Who are you?" Holly grabbed for the poker by the fireplace, holding it in front of her. "Why are you in my house?"

"You told me to stay here," said the man, as he unfolded his long limbs. He was very... long, with lanky legs and stretched out arms. He made Holly think of a regular sized man who had somehow gotten stuck in a taffy machine, and pulled. Although something about his face looked familiar. 

"Dan?" The man in front of her had some vague resemblance to the woman she'd treated the day before, but... well.

"Yep," said Dan, and he stood up completely, looking down at himself. "I seem to be myself, at least."

"That's good," Holly said. Her own voice sounded like it was coming from a long way off. "I should still do an examination." 

"Right," said Dan, and then he paused. "Is this going to be, uh, be weird? Since I'm... y'know, the right shape now."

"You're my patient," Holly said patiently. "Regardless of what shape you are, you're still my patient."

"Right," said Dan, and he cleared his throat. "What do you need me to do?"

"Stay there for the moment," said Holly. "I need to get my bag."

 

* * *

 

Holly did another examination of Dan. 

His body was the same as it had been the day before, apart from a few slight variations. He had a prick now, not a quim, and his chest was flatter, hairier. But the same scars, the same health problems, the same... everything. When she tested his stool and urine, it gave the same results as the day before. So did his blood.

"This shouldn't be possible," Holly said flatly, when she'd put away her kit, and was going around feeding her birds. 

"That's what I was saying yesterday," said Dan. He was hovering over her, looking nervous. "Can I, uh... can I help?"

"What do you want to help with, specifically?" She had a bag of seeds, and was giving out handfuls to each cage.

"I don't know," Dan admitted, "but I feel weird just... sitting here."

"Do you need to go back to your troupe, talk to them why you were gone yesterday?" Holly wanted some time to herself, to chew over this.

"I should, yeah," said Dan, and he sighed, raking his hand through his hair. It was just as curly and long when he was man shaped - Holly wanted to run her fingers through it, and she wasn't sure what to make of that. "Can I meet you for lunch at your office?"

"Of course," Holly said. "I'll see you then."

He bent down, and he hugged her, his hands on her lower back, his chin against her temple. "Thank you," he said quietly.

Holly was so discombobulated that she wasn't sure how to react to that. "I didn't do anything," she said, and she was holding herself stiffly.

When was the last time someone had hugged her?

"Well, you must have done _something_ ," said Dan, "if you managed to get me back to being... myself!"

Holly shrugged, but she was smiling behind her mask as he walked off. How about that, hm? She'd have been tempted to tell him to go on with his life, but all of this was just... too weird. She wanted to document it.

 

* * *

 

Holly was seeing her third patient of the day off when she found Dan in her waiting room. He had what looked like yet another piece of pie wrapped in a kerchief, and he looked distressed.

"Dan?" Was it lunch time? It didn't seem to be that late, but then again, she could get lost in what she was doing.

Her last patient had been dealing with a strange sort of sickness - her arm had withered like a plant deprived of water, as if all of the vitality had been sucked out of it. The woman was twenty two, but the bones of the one arm were as brittle as an eighty year old's, and her skin was liver spotted and wrinkled. The arm had broken when she fell, that morning. 

Holly, at a loss for ideas, had set her broken arm and told her to report back in a week. She was going to need to go to the university again, for the second time in one month. 

"Hi," said Dan. His expression was... pained. 

"Hi," said Holly, and she sat next to him on her couch for patients. Her next patient hadn't arrived yet. "Are you alright?"

"My troupe didn't remember me," Dan said quietly. 

"What do you mean?" Holly glanced at him sidelong. He had a very nice profile, and she wanted to run her fingers along the line of his nose to his chin. 

"I went there, and they had a new singer. Only he _wasn't_ a new singer, because he'd been there for a long time. All the other people at the tavern remembered him as being their singer. They didn't remember me at all." Dan rubbed his forehead, looking stricken. "I was with that troupe for _years_ , but nobody remembered me."

"Oh," said Holly. 

"It's like... memories of me are just getting blotted out of people's minds," said Dan, and his voice broke. He was crying, Holly realized, and that was... uncomfortable. At a loss for anything else to do, she gave him a handkerchief. 

He dabbed at his face, and he snuffled into the linen. "I'm sorry," he mumbled.

"Don't be," she said. "It sounds scary." More of this plague of strangeness. 

"I just... why is my life changing?" Dan's voice cracked. "I don't mind it... I'm alright with things changing slowly, but this is just... I don't know what it is." He sighed, slumping down into the couch, and he looked like a miserable folding chair left out in someone's front garden.

"I don't know," said Holly. "Maybe it has something to do with the river." It was a hunch, but she trusted her hunches.

"What about the river?" Dan looked at her, his expression hard to read. 

"I... don't think it's meant to be there," Holly said slowly. "But I know it sounds mad when I say it like that."

Dan shrugged. "Any madder than my friends of who know how many years flat out forgetting me?" His voice was very dry, but there was an undercurrent of grief to it. 

"I can't really argue with that," said Holly.

"We should go back to the University," said Dan. "To talk to your mentor. Maybe he can figure this out."

"I don't know," Holly said. "I've dealt with odd problems before."

"It's like people are being... erased from the world," said Dan. "Or blotted out, or... something."

Holly shrugged. She wasn't sure. 

"I brought you lunch," said Dan, and he held out the pie. "It's vegetable pie, from the same place as yesterday."

"Thank you," said Holly. 

"Is it... is it okay if I stay here?" Dan rubbed his hands together - he looked supremely uncomfortable. "I'll clean, or I'll... I don't know. I just need to not go back to that tavern."

"You could go to your family?" 

"What if they've forgotten me?" Dan's whole face went wide and pale, full of horror.

"That would be pretty horrible," Holly agreed, and she squeezed his knee. "I'm sorry." The gesture was unexpected - she wasn't usually one for physical demonstrations like that. Most Plague Doctors weren't exactly known for being physically demonstrative. 

"I'll... help you," said Dan. "However you need me to."

"Thank you," said Holly. She meant it, too. She couldn't ask him to do much in the way of treating patients, but knowing there was someone else here who was noticing all of the strange things happening helped. 

"I'll help however I can," Dan told her. "I mean it."

Holly nodded, and she squeezed his fingers again. They were very long, and very thin. If he were a Plague Doctor, he probably would have sewn the most delicate, sure sutures. The mental image of his fingers holding a needle made something deep in her belly clench, and she bit her lip, blushing behind her mask. She wasn't usually one subject to flights of fancy, let alone ones that left her quite so... distracted, but then again, everything was acting odd, wasn't it?

She cleared her throat. "I'm going to prepare for my next patient. After them, we can eat lunch."

"Right," said Dan. "I'll... stay out of trouble." He smiled, self deprecating, and he stretched, his long legs taking up the small space. 

She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling a bit in spite of herself. 

 

* * *

 

Holly's next patient never came back, but her earlier patient returned. It was the woman with the withered arm - she stumbled into the waiting room and banged heavily on the door to Holly's office. She was pale and shaking, and the arm was dangling in a way that didn't look... right, in the woman's sleeve. 

"There's something wrong with it," the woman, Angela, said.

"I don't think anything has changed since -"

Angela shrugged out of her coat, and something along the skin of her arm... moved. 

Holly frowned, and she took a closer look. She'd seen movement like that on older corpses, when they'd been sitting in the sun for a while, after insects had begun to hatch on it. But that made no sense. She'd been examining the arm earlier, and it had been alive. Old and delicate and broken, but alive.

Angela clumsily rolled up the sleeve of her dress, and the room was filled with the sickly-sweet smell of decay, meat rotting on the bone. Holly hadn't stuffed the beak of her mask with any aromatics, and she was regretting that almost immediately, because the scent was filling her small office. The skin was hanging off, loose, and there were maggots crawling along it, sliding in and out of small holes in the flesh. Holly could see the meat of Angela’s arm - a greyish purple, a color that was not the color of healthy tissue, or even sick tissue. There were glimpses of the ivory colored bone as well, and Holly’s stomach lurched, just a bit. 

"It just started... rotting," Angela said, and her voice was rough. "I don't know what's wrong with it, but it doesn't hurt anymore, it's just numb, but I can't move it." There were tears tracking down her face. She shrugged, and the arm waggled in its sleeve. There was a wet, clicking sound, and... oh no. 

Holly bent down to look closer, and saw that the fingers of the hand were turning black like a corpse’s. Two fingernails had already fallen off, and then Angela gave another shrug, and the whole hand just… fell off. Flat out fell off, to land with a dull ‘thump’ on the floor. The skin around the wrist was loose, flaps of it hanging over the exposed bone. _It’s like a dress with a torn sleeve_ passed through Holly’s head, and only years of dissection kept her from vomiting there. 

“What’s wrong with me, Doctor?” Angela’s face turned ashy. “Why is my arm suddenly lighter?”

“You’re going to lose the arm,” said Holly, and she was speaking without thinking, but it was better to act on impulse when time was of the essence. “My assistant will help get you comfortable.”

“I have to _lose my arm_?!” Angela gaped at Holly. Her face was still pale, and she was swaying on her feet. 

“The infection may spread,” Holly said firmly. _I don’t want the whole thing to fall off right here_ , passed through her mind, a delirious thought. 

“But… I need my arm,” Angela said helplessly.

“It’s your left arm,” Holly said firmly. “You’re right handed.”

“But what… what about my job? I can’t be a seamstress with just one hand!”

“It’s your arm or your life,” Holly said flatly. “You can find a way to live with just one arm. You cannot if you are dead.”

“Oh,” said Angela, then; “how am I going to pay for this?”

“Don’t worry about payment,” said Holly. “You pay your taxes, and the University covers necessary surgeries.”

“And this surgery is necessary?” Angela shuddered, and a few maggots dropped down onto the floor, writhing. 

Holly had never been so grateful for her mask - it hid the revolted face she was pulling, her nose and her forehead wrinkling up. “Yes,” Holly said. “Please wait here.”

* * *

Holly closed the door and leaned heavily on it. Dan, who had been sitting on the couch with a book, looked up at her, concerned. 

“Are you alright?” He looked anxious now.

“I need to ask you a favor,” she said, “and it is an unpleasant favor, but it is something that needs to be done. If you cannot do it, I need you to run to the butcher shop down the street and get the apprentice.”

“What do you need me to do? I’ll do anything for you, Holly.” It was a burst of sincerity that would normally give Holly pause, but she was too busy being sickened by what she’d seen in the exam room.

“I need to cut that woman’s arm off,” Holly said flatly. “I need you to hold her down while I do it.”

“You’re going to do it to her while she’s… while she’s still awake?” Dan looked horrified. “And right now?”

“If i don’t do it now, it may just fall off,” Holly said, and she kept her voice flat, unmodulated. “I have a surgery room. I need you to calm her down and talk to her. I will give her a draught that will make her sleepy, but it’s usually something that I prepare beforehand, and so it won’t be exact enough. There’s a chance she’ll wake up.” Holly rubbed her temples. She’d performed several emergency amputations, but… this one felt different.

“Right,” said Dan, and he squared his shoulders. “What do you need me to do?”

“Before you do anything else,” she told him, “I need you to tie your hair back and put on gloves. I have a mask for you to wear as well.”

“A mask like yours?” She couldn’t entirely read what his face was doing, but he was clearly feeling some sort of something.

“No,” she said. “You haven’t earned my mask. But it is similar. It covers your mouth and your nose, to protect you from the dangerous vapors.”

“Right,” said Dan. “Alright. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

* * *

 

Bless Dan, he did what he was asked to without arguing with her or asking questions. He   
gave the draught to Angela, and he talked to her quietly as Holly made the operating theater ready. He gave Angela the robe that patients to be operated on wore, and he graciously hung her dress up on the hanger on the back of Holly’s office door. When Angela fell asleep, he helped Holly lift her onto the table in the operating theater. He’d tied his hair back as well, and the mask looked odd, with his eyes peering out over the beak of it. The long leather apron and leather gloves suited him as well, and she was briefly struck with the image of looking at him in class - he looked like an apprentice. 

“Alright,” Holly said quietly, when the two of them were standing over Angela, who was sleeping on the operating table, “I’m going to be removing the arm now. Are you going to be alright?”

“I’m not the best with blood,” Dan admitted. 

“I don’t know if there’s going to be blood,” Holly admitted. The hand (which was in a bag on a tray next to the table) hadn’t bled at all. She was going to have to examine it, soon. 

“Right,” said Dan. “That’s alright, then.” He gave her a slightly sickly smile behind the mask, his eyes crinkling up.

Holly carefully untied the robe, and she pulled the dead, rotting arm out of the sleeve. It was like night and day - the dead skin and the living skin stood side by side, as if drawn on by pen. Under the better light - mirrored candles, all around them - the dead skin looked that much more… dead.

Dan made a choked, strangled sound, although his hands were still gentle on Angela’s shoulder. “What… is that?” 

“I don’t know,” Holly said, “but I don’t want it to get worse.” She selected her scalpel first, and she pressed down on the line between pink, healthy skin and greying dead skin. 

It was like cutting into a rotting apple - the skin didn’t so much split as sag, and it was soft all the way down to the bone. A revolting sort of soft - she had been holding the dead arm in place, and her finger had gone through the muscle. Her gorge rose in the back of her throat, and she cleared it carefully, and went back to separating. 

“At least it’s exactly at the joint,” she said quietly.

“At the joint,” Dan echoed. 

He was quiet otherwise, as she carefully pulled the skin and muscle away. It was almost like wet paper mache - rotten and sticky, trying to cling to her fingers. She didn’t have to cut the arm off - it pulled away. The joint popped, and then there was a space between the pitted, rotten ball of the shoulder, and the healthy white socket. 

Holly had never really eaten meat - before she’d become a Plague Doctor, her family had been too poor to afford giving meat to its skinny little daughter, and then she’d been part of an order that didn’t eat meat. But she’d seen someone dejoint a chicken before, and she was reminded of that - the simple pop, and then two separate pieces of meat.

Holly had no illusions that people were anything but meat. She’d dissected enough - dead criminals, dead friends, dead patients. Human beings were made of meat, and to the meat they returned. 

It took Holly forty five minutes to sew the stump of Angela's arm up - she had to do interesting things with the skin, to cover up the bone, and bless Dan, but he barely flinched when Holly told him to put the severed arm on the table next to the hand. 

Angela didn't wake up, thank everything, but Holly's heart was in her throat the entire time. She had Dan hold the woman down while she sewed, and when it was done, she sighed, tying Angela's robe up again. Some of the color was returning to Angela's face already, beginning to look pinker, less grey. The dead arm was just... sitting there. Holly would give it a proper dissection when she had the time. For now, it could stay in that one spot.

"Dan?" Holly didn't like how tired her voice sounded. 

"Yes?" He sounded equally tired. 

"We need to get her into the bed," said Holly. She had a little sectioned off area, for people to sleep after a surgery. "After we've cleaned up, I want you to go to Angela's boarding house. The woman in charge is Angela's aunt. She'll take Angela in." The part of her mind that always got to business was taking over, thankfully. She was going to get stuff done, and when it was done, she could panic. 

Time and a place. 

"Right," said Dan. "I'll get the front end, you get the back end?"

"Right." 

They carried Angela (awkwardly - this was easier with the butcher's boy, who was almost Holly's height) and set her on the cot. Holly listened to Angela's heartbeat and lungs, to make sure the woman was still hanging in there, and found everything in working order. 

"What do you need me to do now?" It was still odd to see Dan's face, peering at her over the beak of his mask. 

"I have a sink, out by the pump," said Holly. "Can you put the instruments in it, please? I'm going to wash everything. I just need to look up Angela's address."

"Right," said Dan. He went to the table, piling the various instruments onto a tray and making his way towards the door. His big feet in their equally big boots thumped on the tiled floor, and there was something weirdly reassuring about it. Holly knew the importance of having another person around that you could look at and go "oh, ew!" with, but often forgot about it.

She was used to being on her own at this point - why change a working formula?

She took her gloves off, put on a new pair. The old pair would probably have to be burned, but she'd worry about that then. There was a moment of anxiety, as the air brushed against her bare skin, but she wasn't going to worry about that. She was going to find Angela's address, she was going to send Dan to Angela's boarding house, and she was going to go home and break into her stash of brandy, because... she needed it.

She was going to go to the university - this was the kind of thing that you _reported_ , because... well. This wasn't something you could just leave, was it? A plague of people waking up the wrong age or the wrong sex was one thing, but having bits of themselves just... rotting off was a whole different thing. A thing that Holly didn't even _understand_ , let alone know how to deal with. She wanted to put her face in her hands and groan, but no. This wasn't the time for that. 

If Holly had learned nothing from the Plague Doctors, it was how to put her head down and get the job done. So she'd get the job done, and then she'd fall apart. She'd have to find some way of kicking Dan out for that, but that was a problem for future Holly.

Holly was jolted out of her reverie by the sound of someone vomiting. It was a pretty spectacular vomit, all things considered. It sounded downright projectile. 

Which meant that Angela was probably throwing up, and she had been put to sleep on her back. Shit.

Holly ran into her recovering room... and nearly vomited herself. The whole room smelled like decay - _this is what one of those ancient tombs would smell like, without all of the mildew and mold_ \- and then she found Dan, who was vomiting profusely on the floor. He wasn't wearing his mask - it was clutched in one hand, thankfully vomit-free. 

"Holly," he mumbled, and he was gasping. There was a little dribble of bile coming out of his nose, and his trousers were splattered with the contents of his stomach. "Holly, she's dead."

Holly gritted her teeth and rolled her eyes. "That's no reason to react... oh." 

She'd walked closer, and... she saw what was on the bed.

Angela was dead. Long dead. Her skin seemed to sag in certain places, and had lost its pinkness, its firmness. It was slack and grey, soft as a rotten peach, bloated in some spots, caved in others. Her eye sockets were empty, the lids concave over them, and her nose had rotted off. There was... fluid, staining the bedding around her, and the rotten fruit and meat scent of decay was filling the whole room, a miasma of malevolence. 

Holly wasn't thinking - she grabbed Dan by the wrist, and she towed him out, through the operating theater, into her small backyard. She took deep breaths of the leather of her mask, as he leaned against the wall, his knee nearly banging into the pump. He was panting like he'd been running, and his face was very red. 

At least there wasn't any vomit in his hair.

"What... what happened to her?" His voice was rough from throwing up, from what was clearly terror. 

"I don't know," Holly said. She was seized with the wild notion to yank her mask off, to leave her face bare and just breathe in the clean air. She hadn't been maskless outdoors since she'd started to menstruate, and it was a heady thought. 

"She was... she wasn't just dead," Dan said, and he sounded like he was coming from a long way off. "She wasn't _just_ dead, she was more than dead, she was... she was very dead."

"She was long dead," Holly said.

"But she can't be long dead, she wasn't dead when we put her to bed. She was looking _better_." There were tears tracking down Dan's face now, mingling with the vomit on his chin.

"Why did you take the mask off?" Holly's tone was sharp now. 

"We were... we were done with the surgery," Dan mumbled. "I thought that... you know, since we had done the thing, we didn't need to worry about bad humors anymore."

_He's not a Plague Doctor_ , Holly reminded herself. _He wasn't trained the way you were._ She wanted to bash her head into the wall until everything made sense, because none of this did. sometimes people died, or their bodies withered, but they didn't... age. They didn't go from "sleeping" to "dead enough to have maggots" over maybe twenty five minutes. 

There was a wrongness about this that made her want to be sick herself - not even the vileness of a long dead body, because she had experience with long dead bodies. No, this was something else - this was the kind of wrongness that made some part of her very _soul_ itch, and she didn't know what to do with that. 

The first Plague hadn't been like this - it had been bad, but it had proceeded in an orderly manner, more or less. Things didn't seem to jump in and out of time - in and out of _reality_.

"We need to go to the University," Holly said, "and we need to go talk to Angela's Aunt."

"Right," said Dan. "Which do you want to do first? Should we split up?" There was still dried vomit on his face, and Holly made a face.

"Wash your face first," she told him, not unkindly. 

"Right," said Dan. "I, uh... which would you prefer I do?"

"Stay with me," Holly said impulsively. 

“Stay with you?” Dan looked surprised.

“Stay with me,” Holly repeated. “I… I don’t want to have to talk to Angela’s aunt on my own. She’s a nice woman. And at the University, I’ll be more likely to be believed if I have another witness, even if you’re not a Plague Doctor.”

“Why wouldn’t they believe you?” Dan looked at her, wide eyed, his cheeks red from where he’d scrubbed them with the cold water from the pump. 

“Because if I say that a body rotted like it had been dead for months over the course of twenty five-ish minutes, they’re going to think that I’m crazy,” Holly said flatly. “If you corroborate it, they’ll at least have to say that there’s something that’s causing shared hallucinations.”

“Do you _think_ it’s a hallucination?” There was a sputtering sound, as Dan dunked his head under the pump and worked the handle, dousing his whole head in cold water. 

“I don’t know,” Holly said, her voice helpless. “I don’t… I don’t know.”

“Right,” said Dan. “So what are we doing?” His hair dripped down his face, but he’d lost his greenish tint. 

“I’m going to treat this like a Plague,” Holly said, _We_ , she noted. “Cordon off my house. Go to the University to report it. Maybe have my mentor investigate.”

“Right,” said Dan. “So we’re going to the University, then Angela’s aunt’s house?”

“Yes,” said Holly. 

“Alright,” said Dan, then he paused. “Do you happen to have a pair of trousers I could borrow, perhaps?” He looked down at his own vomit splattered ones.

“Afraid not,” she said. “Anyway, any I’d loan you wouldn’t fit you.”

He sighed. “My house is near the University,” he asid. “After we go to report, I can at least change. We don’t need to tell Angela’s aunt that her niece is dead while she has to smell my puke.”

That was a remarkably kind thing to say - Holly hadn’t expected that. 

“Right,” Holly said. “Let me just make some arrangements.”

 

* * *

 

This time, they went through the main gate of the University. They received a few sidelong looks - here was a civilian, his naked face peering around the place anxiously. Still. 

“I’d like to report an incident,” said Holly to the Plague Doctor behind the desk.

“What sort of incident?” This Plague Doctor had a woman’s voice, and it sounded bored.

Holly looked over at Dan, making deliberate eye contact. 

Dan shrugged helplessly. 

They were being given a wide berth by the people around them - the hall was big enough that they didn’t worry about the scent of Dan’s vomit permeating the space, but it was still… unpleasant. 

“I need an investigation, and to talk to an investigator,” said Holly. “I’d also like to talk to my mentor.”

“Right,” said the Plague Doctor behind the desk, and then she was standing up. “Come with me.”

 

* * *

 

Dan and Holly waited in a small room.

It was small enough that the smell was already getting overwhelming. She should have at least asked him to rinse his trousers off a little better, before the two of them had set out.

“So what are we doing?” Dan was pacing now, his hands stuffed into his pockets. He looked anxious.

“We’re waiting,” Holly said, leaning back into her seat. Her eyes were closed, although Dan wouldn't know that.

“What are we waiting for?” 

“We need to talk to an Investigator,” said Holly. “They’ll take our statement, then they’ll got to my practice.”

“What are we going to do?” 

“After we’re interviewed, we’ll go to your house so you can change. Then we’ll go to Angela’s aunt’s house.”

“Right,” said Dan. “Okay. But why are we waiting?”

“Investigators do a lot of things,” Holly said. “A lot of investigating. So there’s a lot of waiting.” Her head was pounding, like the time she’d been at the homemade liquor, when she was just a student. It had been triple distilled in stolen equipment, and it had tasted like burned dirt.

“Can we go talk to Brian?” 

“We’re waiting for him to come here. And probably not until after we’ve talked to the Investigator.”

“Why?” Dan stopped his pacing.

“Why _what_?” Why had she taken a civilian with her? Why was she in particular stuck with this? Why was this happening in the first place?

“Why do we have to wait for Brian? Can’t he talk to us while we wait for the Investigator?”

“No,” said Holly. “It might taint our testimony. Technically we should be separated, come to think of it.” That was an odd thing to consider.

“What, really?” Dan looked horrified. 

“Yeah. Maybe they’re out of rooms,” said Holly, although that would be… odd, to say the least. She’d never seen all of the rooms filled. 

“Is that, like, normal?” Dan ceased his pacing to flop on the seat next to hers, and he covered his face with both hands. He was sprawled out, like a coil of rope someone had left undone, his long legs stretching almost all the way out to the opposite wall. 

“No,” Holly said bluntly. There was tension in her shoulders, and she tried to relax them - pain was shooting along them, making her hands shake, adding to the headache. 

“Right,” said Dan. “Okay.” 

They were interrupted by the door opening, and another Plague Doctor coming in. Another woman, and she sat down at the desk in front of them, her elbows on it, her chin on her palm. 

“So,” she said. “What’s happening?”

Holly took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts… and then she began to talk. 

 

* * *

 

By the time Holly had finished talking, the Plague Doctor in front of them had taken copious notes. When it was all finished, she a had three sheets of paper in front of her, written on the front and the back in her tiny handwriting in the Plague Doctor’s own cipher. 

“So you’re saying she just… died?” The beak of the Plague Doctor’s mask was pointing at the paper, as if she was trying to reread what she’d just written. 

“She didn’t just die,” said Holly. “She went from ‘alive’ to ‘dead for at least a month,’” said Holly. “It was as her body had… skipped several steps in the process of decomposition.”

“And you’re sure that you’re not just imagining things?” The Plague Doctor was clearly trying not to sound condescending. 

“If I was imagining it, then so was he,” said Holly, indicating Dan. 

Dan nodded, looking faintly queasy. “I, uh… there were bugs,” he said, and he was turning faintly green around the edges.

“Why is he here with you, anyway?” The Plague Doctor interviewing her had switched to the Plague Doctor’s own dialect, which was about as old as the city and unknown to almost everyone. 

“It’s a long story,” Holly said, in the same dialect. Her voice was very tired.

Dan was looking at the two of them, clearly lost and also, clearly, not wanting to show that he was lost. 

“Well, I’ve got time,” said the Plague Doctor.

Holly sighed. “Dan,” she said, in the dialect of the city at large, “please tell the Doctor about why you’re with me in the first place.”

So Dan told his story - waking up the wrong sex the day before, everything being out of place.

The Plague Doctor took more notes. Lots of notes. The poor woman would probably have some pretty bad writer’s cramp, by the time this interview was finished. 

“Right,” she said, and she passed her hands over her eyes. “I’m going to recommend you avoid your practice until we’ve summoned you. This may take a few days.” 

Holly made a face, behind her mask. “Right,” she said.

“Your mentor is busy investigating something else,” the Plague Doctor told her. “I would recommend you stay in your home environs for the next few days, until we summon you again.”

“Right,” said Holly. This was all very complicated, but… well. At least it wasn’t just her dealing with it anymore, right? 

“Very good,” said the Plague Doctor, and she shook Holly’s hand.

Holly shook hers back, and then the Plague Doctor walked out.

Dan looked faintly offended, but… well. He was a civilian. He didn’t get it. 

“So,” said Dan, “are we free to go?”

“We’re free to go,” said Holly. “You wanted to go back to your home?”

“Right,” said Dan, and he scrubbed his face with one hand, looking very tired. “I’m sorry for… all of this.” 

Holly shrugged. “You didn’t do… whatever it was to Angela,” she pointed out. “That’s the thing that we’re dealing with right now.” 

“I’m glad you’ve got some company while you’re going through all of this, at least,” Dan said earnestly, and Holly snorted in spite of herself.

“Thank you,” she said, and hopefully she sounded grateful and not sarcastic. 

“So,” Dan said, rubbing his hands together, “now you can come see _my_ lodgings.” He laughed a little, clearly torn between amusement and discomfort. “You’d think we were courting.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Holly told him. “I’ve never been courted. Or done any courting.”

“What, really?” Dan looked surprised. “Why not?”

“I’m not allowed to,” Holly said, indicating the University around her. “We don’t court.”

“Do you… never mind,” said Dan. 

“Do I what?” They were walking through the University halls together, slowly. 

“This isn’t the, uh… the place,” said Dan, and Holly saw his eyes scanning over the assembled Plague Doctors, the skull and bone motif, the huge windows overlooking the river. 

“No?” She kept her voice bland. 

"Do you think that Plague Doctors don't do that?" There were a lot of Plague Doctors milling about, and they all looked anxious. 

"I mean," Dan said, as they passed under a balcony. Their feet rang like bells on the tile. 

"You mean?" Holly resisted the urge to reach out and grab his hand. _Even now, with his own vomit on his trousers and in the midst of the world going crazy, he is a very handsome man._ That was a surprising thing to think. She didn't normally... work like that. She'd been vaguely attracted to people in the past, but not this bolt of almost _anxious_ wanting. 

Maybe she was feeling all of the craziness of the last couple of days. She'd read somewhere that people tended to want to have sex after a funeral or some similarly traumatic event. Did this count as a traumatic event?

She held on to her walking stick with one hand, and shoved her other hand into her pocket.

"I need to go to my lodgings," said Dan, "get a clean pair of trousers. Then we can go to... to Angela's aunt's house. To tell her what happened."

"Right," said Holly. "That sounds like the best course of action." They were being given a large berth - people usually didn't like interacting with Holly if they could help it. Plague Doctors made people uncomfortable. Then again, she was _also_ walking along next to a man who had vomit splattered all over his shins, so... that might have been a factor. She grinned a bit in spite of herself - it was a bit nice to not be the one that people were avoiding, for once. 

 

* * *

 

Nobody at Dan's lodgings recognized him. 

His key didn't work, and the woman who he claimed was his landlady threatened to call the constables on him, if he wasn't gone. Admittedly, Holly couldn't entirely blame her - if some strange, vomit splattered man had showed up at her home and said that no really, he lived there, she would have been put out as well.

She might not have thrown a kettle at his head, but then again, she wasn't the kettle throwing type. It was only Holly's own intervention that settled things. Now Dan was walking morosely next to her, his hands shoved into his pockets.

"I can't believe she forgot me," he said. "When she got sick, I stayed with her for a whole week. I fixed the roof of that place, I helped her deal with problem lodgers...." 

Holly tried to imagine long, lanky Dan being much help with any "problem" lodger, and drew a blank. Dan was about as intimidating as a stalk of asparagus. But what did she know? 

"I'm sure it'll sort itself out," she said, even though she honestly wasn't... sure. But what else was she supposed to say?

"Can I borrow a pair of trousers?" He looked sheepish now.

"None of my clothes would fit you," said Holly. "I'll buy you a few pairs of trousers." 

"You don't need to do that," said Dan, although he looked almost pathetically grateful. 

"You'll be staying with me," Holly said, "and evidently helping out in my practice, at least a little bit. I can't have you wandering around in fouled trousers."

"Right," said Dan. He sniffed very hard, and Holly glanced over at him. Was he going to start crying? She didn't want to have to deal with that. She was already learning that Dan was a person who had many feelings, sometimes all at once. 

"So," said Holly, "we'll stop by the clothiers, we'll get you some trousers, maybe a shirt or two -" Holly was stopped mid sentence by Dan throwing his arms around her, right there in the street. _He's going to get dried vomit on my skirt,_ passed through her head, and she made a face behind her mask, but kept her body posture as normal as she could.

Everyone on the street was giving them a wide berth, and she could be grateful for that, too. 

"Thank you," Dan said, and his voice was downright... wet. "Thank you for your... for your kindness, I don't know what I'd do without it." 

"Well," Holly said, and she cleared her throat. "Well, um. I'm glad to have... helped." 

"Right," said Dan, and he pulled away from her, wiping his face on the back of his sleeve. "Sorry," he said, and he laughed, awkward. "It all got kind of overwhelming there."

"I can only imagine," Holly said. "This has all been... a lot." 

They arrived at the clothiers districts, and Holly made her way towards a shop that she knew to be reliable. "I hope you like black," she told Dan. 

"It does go with everything," he said. His smile was still a tad wobbly around the edges, but he seemed to be doing better. That was good. 

* * *

Holly bought Dan two pairs of trousers and three new shirts. All of them were black. She seemed to have gained... what, an assistant? An apprentice? He wouldn't ever become a Plague Doctor, although he wouldn't be the first civilian to work beside a Plague Doctor. It wasn't _common_ in the big city - usually it only happened in more rural areas where Plague Doctors had to make do with any strong pair of arms or knowledgeable mind that they could get their hands (metaphorical or otherwise) on. 

They returned to her house, and Dan gave himself a quick scrub down, then put on a pair of clean trousers and a clean shirt. He even combed his hair back, so that he looked slightly more presentable. Then he sighed. "Alright," he said. "Let's go talk to Angela's aunt." 

 

* * *

 

Angela's aunt lived right next to the river - the windows overlooked it's rolling, red waters. Something about the old place gave her the creeps. Had it always given her the creeps? She'd walked by the house before, and she didn't remember it being this... well. Like _that_. 

She remembered the rotten, sickly sweetness of Angela’s rotten corpse, and she desperately wished that she could reach out and grab for Dan’s hand. 

* * *

Angela’s aunt was an elderly woman - not a frail sort of elderly, but the type of old that seemed to drawn into itself, get stronger. It reminded Holly of the way that old wood could turn into stone, if put in the right conditions. She wasn’t from the city originally, and she spoke with a thick enough accent that it took Holly a few seconds to discern each word. She served them tea in glasses, and sugar cubes to strain it through. 

Dan, to his eternal credit, seemed a bit lost, but more or less kept up.

“Your niece is dead,” said Holly, who wasn’t the best at beating around the bush.

Angela’s aunt - Marya - blinked at them. “Dead? How?”

“Her arm was infected,” said Dan. “We… that is, Doctor Holly did the work, I just helped - tried to stop the infection, but it was bad enough that it ended up… ended up with her dying.”

“I see,” said Marya. Her voice was very calm. “Was it painful?” 

_Your niece rotted like an apple left on the table for too long_ , flashed through Holly’s head. “No,” said Holly. “No, she was asleep.”

“Thank you for your help, Doctor,” said Marya. She was speaking mechanically. Grief did that to some people. “When will you be releasing my niece’s body?” 

“I need to do some tests first,” said Holly. “When it’s done, I will come here myself and bring you to her body. Alright?” 

Marya nodded. “Thank you for your treatment, Doctor,” she said. 

“Your niece didn’t experience any pain,” Dan said earnestly. “She was a very nice lady.”

“Thank you,” said Marya. 

“Thank you for your time,” said Holly, and she stood up carefully. “Have a good evening.” 

* * *

“Do you… do you have to do that a lot?” Dan sounded anxious, as the two of them made their way towards Holly’s lodgings. 

“Have to do what?” Holly gave a sigh of relief when they were out of sight of the river, a whole block of houses between the two of them. 

“Have to talk to people’s families,” said Dan. “I… I think I hated that more than cutting the arm off.” 

“Yeah?” Holly made a sympathetic noise. “I always thought maybe I was defective, since it’s always been so hard for me.” 

“You thought there was something wrong with you because you didn’t like talking to people grieving?” Dan sounded surprised. 

“A good Plague Doctor is adept at both interacting with the public and treating patients,” said Holly. “I’m decent at treating patients, not so decent at interacting with the public.”

“You must be very strong,” Dan said earnestly, “if you can just… do that.”

“Do what?” 

“Just… tell people that their loved ones are dead. That you were there when they died, and you were at least somewhat involved. Even if it isn’t your fault - and it isn’t,” he added quickly, when he saw her face. “But… it’s scary.”

“Thank you,” Holly said, and she was genuinely touched.

“I’ll get us dinner,” said Dan. “Something that’s not pie,” he added, and he was grinning a bit. 

“Stay with me,” Holly said impulsively. “I’ve… I can make soup. We can have soup. But please. I don’t… I don’t want to be alone.” _She was fine, and then she was long dead, and there wasn’t any time in between._

“I’ll stay,” said Dan. “I’m not going anywhere, I promise.” He made a face then. “It’s not like I can go anywhere.”

“You can find a job,” Holly said. _Please don’t go. Don’t leave me. I can’t be alone with nothing but my birds._ She’d been okay with just her birds before - she _loved_ her birds. But there was a time and a place, and this wasn’t it. 

“Yeah,” said Dan, “but who knows what’s going to happen next. I might as well… approach it at a later date.”

“Right,” said Holly. They were standing in front of her front door. “Shall we?”

“Let’s,” said Holly. She unlocked the door, and Dan held it open. She looked sidelong at him, and the light shadowed his profile, gilding it. _I want to take him as my lover,_ she thought, and then she blushed. 

At least he couldn’t see, under the leather of her mask. 

 

* * *

 

Holly didn’t know how to seduce someone - her last lover had been when she’d been a student, He had been another Plague Doctor, and they had both been virgins. It had been a good experiment - to see what happened, how to do it. She didn’t get pregnant - Plague Doctors saw to that. But he wasn’t a Plague Doctor, didn’t know their ways, didn’t know much of… anything.

There was something weirdly safe about that. Sometimes that made her feel better. He made her feel safe, which wasn’t a thing she had realized was an option.

He sat on her dusty couch, and he talked to her birds, talked to her about this and that. He whistled at them, sang bits and pieces of songs back to them. She was utterly charmed, and didn’t know what to do with herself. He was talking to fill up the quiet, but she wasn’t going to complain - if she closed her eyes, she could still see Angela’s face.

“Holly?” Dan looked at her over the couch, tucking a piece of his long hair behind one ear.

“Yes?” She looked at him full on, the beak of her mask pointed towards his face. 

“What… what are you going to do tomorrow?”

“Well,” said Holly, “they’ve closed my practice for now, as they investigate. They’re going to want to interview us again, after they’ve done a thorough investigation. They’re probably going over my practice right now.” 

“Oh,” said Dan. He rubbed his hands together.

“I’d like to have sex with you,” said Holly. 

Um.

That wasn’t how she was supposed to do it. She wasn’t sure _how_ she was supposed to do it, but this wasn’t it. 

“What?” Dan looked at her, eyes wide.

“Sex. With you. I would like to do it.” She was in it now, so she might as well go all the way in. “If you’d like, obviously.”

“Do Plague Doctors… do that?” He looked perplexed. “How does that… how does that work?” He was flushing, his cheeks turning red, all the way to his ears. 

“I’m a human under all of… this,” said Holly, indicating herself. “There would obviously be minimal skin to skin contact, for safety reasons….”

“Obviously,” Dan echoed. He sounded faintly shell shocked. 

“So… are you interested?” She stared down at her own hands. This was all just so… weird, and not something she would have approached, before she’d seen all of this strangeness. Before Angela had rotted on her exam table like a piece of old fruit. 

Having any kind of sexual relations with a civilian was… generally frowned on, but _Angela had rotted._ Holly was still wrapping her mind around the sheer _wrongness_ of it, and she needed to not have it echoing through her head. She could almost smell the sickly sweetness of it, sticking to her mask like some kind of scummy miasma. There were a lot of jokes about people having sex after some kind of death - not amongst the Plague Doctors, because they were used to death.

Was this what death was like, to civilians? Some aching, painful _wrongness_ that ate at her like some kind of acid, leaving her lost and confused. She needed to do _something_ \- she didn’t even know what kind of something, but she had to wash the sticky taint of it off of her mind. 

“I'm… sure,” said Dan. He sounded very dazed. “I'll have sex with you.” He paused. “Can I see your face?”

“No,” she said sharply. “It's unsafe for me to take my mask off.”

“Right,” said Dan. “Apologies.” He cleared his throat. “I just… I just don't know how to engage in sex without kissing someone.”

“You can still kiss me,” Holly said. “Just not my face.” She held out one of her hands, trembling, reaching for his face. 

He pressed his cheek into her palm, nuzzling into it, then kissed it. The leather of her glove creaked when she flexed her fingers, going into his hair. “Can I take off your gloves?”

“No,” said Holly. 

His face fell, but he nodded. “What can I do?” 

She took his hands, and she brought them to the buttons of her coat. “You can… you can take it off,” she said quietly. “And you can touch my breasts. And my quim.”

“I mean,” said Dan, “you saw mine when I had one.’

That startled a laugh out of Holly, and Dan smiled back at her, his eyes crinkling at the edges. “Tell me what you want me to do, Holly,” Dan said quietly. “Tell me what to do, and I'll do it.”

“Right,” said Holly. “Okay.” 

 

* * *

 

Dan sat on the floor, between Holly's spread legs. His hands were on her inner thighs - her _bare_ inner thighs, because she'd taken off her stockings and bloomers. She was holding her skirt up, and she was watching his head bob between her legs as he scooted closer. 

“Are you sure this is a thing you want to do?” Holly tried not to sound quite so… nervous. She knew, in theory, that this kind of thing was… well, a thing. But it was one thing to know it in theory, and another to have it staring her in the face. 

Metaphorically, as it were. 

"I can honestly say that it's one of my favorite things to do," said Dan. "Please?" He ran his hands up and down her inner thighs, his breath hot and steamy against the hair between her legs. 

"If you want to," said Holly, because she didn't really... understand it, but if he wanted it, he wanted it. 

He sat back on his heels for a moment, and she looked down at him, over the beak of her mask. Of course, he couldn't tell that she was looking at him - she was always thankful for her mask, and the way it hid her eyes. His face was open and tender, staring into her pinkness, his hands on her inner thighs.

When was the last time she'd been touched like this? The last time she'd taken a lover, her fellow Plague Doctor had been faintly distracted - the both of them had paused to take notes. It had been... fine. She hadn't seen what all of the fuss was about, but then again, there were so many _other_ things she could have been doing with her time.

Dan pressed a kiss to her inner thigh, his mouth delicate, and she clutched at the hem of her skirt, trying not to roll her hips forward, trying not to be too... wanton, for lack of a better way of putting it. 

Not that there was anything wrong with wanton, per se, but her mental image of herself was... not that. She was put together. She was someone who planned, who made things happen the way they needed to happen, who kept the cogs of the world turning. She sighed, taking in the familiar leather scent of her mask, as Dan pushed her thighs open, his curly hair ticklish against her inner thighs as he leaned forward. His tongue was delicate against her quim, tracing her lower lips, then moving along the crease, where her leg met her torso. He kissed it, and then he gave her a long, slow lick, from her arse to the bud at the top of her slit. 

"Oh," Holly said thickly. She'd never had anyone's mouth... well, _there_. It was more intense than she thought it would be, and her heels dug into the couch, her eyes sliding shut.

"Was that a good 'oh' or a bad 'oh'? If it's a bad 'oh', just tell me what you need me to do," said Dan, his head popping up over the hem of her skirt.

"I've, um, I've never done this before," Holly said, her cheeks turning blue.

"You've never had sex before?" Dan looked like a deer caught in the headlights, his eyes wide. 

"No," said Holly. "I've... I don't have a hymen, I've had sex. I've just never... nobody has ever put their mouth on me. Like that." She cleared her throat. 

"Well," he said, "hopefully I'll be able to make it worth it, then!" He grinned at her, cheeky as ever, and then he ducked back under her skirt. He licked her with _intent_ this time, his hands on her inner thighs, holding them open. Then he was holding her _quim_ open, with his thumbs, and his tongue was sliding inside of her, rubbing against that one bud.

Her toes curled, and she made some kind of inelegant noise, her chest heaving. She was keenly aware of all of the clothing covering her, as she began to sweat - the rigidity of the corset, the leather covering skin, the fabric constricting her movements. There was something almost perverse about this - about the way that Dan was looking at this most intimate part of herself, without seeing her face. 

Nobody really knew what her face looked like. That had never bothered her before, but the mental image of Angela, rotting away on the table, drifted into her mind. Angela, with her face gone strange, eyes concave, cheeks hollowed out. If she dropped dead in the street tomorrow, once she took her mask off, would anyone even know her? 

She shuddered, and then she sobbed, as his mouth closed around the bud, his tongue flickering over it. Her knuckles were creaking along with the leather as Dan licked her, sucked her, made her toes curl and all of her muscles tense up. It was like someone was sewing heat through her whole body, leaving her more and more on edge. She'd given herself a paroxysm a few times - they'd had a whole class about it when she was in University, and she found it to be enjoyable. But this... was different.

It was so _intense_ \- she was aware of all of the places where the two of them were touching, of the sounds his mouth was making on her, of the flex and twitch of his tongue against her, of the heat and dampness of his breath. Of his spit, sliding along her own effluvia, as he lapped it up, and then one of his long fingers was nudging into her, and it was... it was a lot. It was more than she'd had inside of herself in years - not since she'd had the dalliance (if something so passionless could even be referred to as a dalliance?), and this felt so fundamentally _different_. Her quim was squeezing around his fingers, and she was getting dizzy from the enclosed space of her mask, and the pleasure seemed to be building and building in her gut, trailing up and down her back, burying its claws in her flesh and yanking.

She was going to have an orgasm - a proper paroxysm, that left her completely spent. He was probably aiming for that, and that wasn't exactly something she had been expecting. She kept riding against his face, not unlike the motion she used when she rode a horse, and then she began to shake. She was so close, she was on the very edge of it. She let her skirt drop, so that she had her hands on top of his head, and she imagined pulling her mask off, letting him see the pale flatness of her actual face, the two of them making eye contact. 

She tried to imagine the color of his eyes, as seen with her own eyes, and then she was gone, her whole body going rigid as she pulsed rapidly between the legs. There was a… gushing, for lack of a better way of putting it, and then Dan was pulling back, sputtering, his face slick with her various excretions. Her skirt was like a tent over his head.

“Fuck, Holly,” he said, and he nuzzled his cheek into her thigh. His face was bristled, and it was slick with her arousal. “Wow. I’ve never been with a woman who just… let loose like that before.” He came out from under her skirt, sitting back on his heels. 

“It isn’t urine,” Holly said, caught in the lethargy that came with an orgasm, sweat pooling in her armpits and the backs of her knees. She’d had that conversation with several different people already.

“Oh, I know,” said Dan, and then he paused, clearing his throat. “Would you, uh, would you be alright if I put my prick inside of you? Or would you prefer me not to?” 

“You can do that,” said Holly. It would only be the second time she’d had a prick inside of her, but she wasn’t too bothered. She remembered it being vaguely pleasant. 

“Do you want me to?” Dan was looking at her with a wide, intense expression.

Holly took stock of herself - she was still fairly aroused, and there was an aching sort of emptiness inside of her. “I would like it,” she told him. She didn’t… not want it, and that was the same idea, right? More or less. 

There was some more arranging - he tilted her back, just a bit, spread her legs, and then he was fumbling with the closure of his pants, and... there was his prick. “Are you… I heard that Plague Doctors can’t have children,” he said, his prick sticky and hot against her thigh. 

It was bigger than the last one she’d had inside of her, although it wasn’t the biggest she’d ever seen - treating as many people as she had, she’d seen just about every variation on bodies. “I can’t get pregnant,” she told him, “if that’s what you’re worried about.” 

“Right,” said Dan, and he pushed his cock forward and into her, his chest heaving as he breached, then slid in. 

She sighed, and she dug her fingers into his shoulders, then moved them up to his face as he pushed himself all the way inside of her. His cock was twitching, and he was misting up the eyes of her mask with his panting.

_Take the mask off,_ she thought. _Take the mask off, let it be off, let him look into your face, let his hot breath wash over your face, let him take in your faintly gawky face and see Holly the person, not Holly the Plague Doctor_.

It had been a long time since she'd thought of herself as anything but a Plague Doctor, and the idea of letting him look into her face, letting him _see_ her, was enough to make her toes curl and her eyes squeeze shut, her own breath filling up the darkness of her mask. She rolled her hips forward, trying to get him deeper inside of her, and he groaned, pressing his forehead against her.

"You're so tight," he said thickly. "You feel... you f-f-feel so good, Holly, you're so wet, so slick, you pulse around me, Holly, you're... oh fuck, don't stop, Holly, _please_ don't stop!" One of his big hands was going between her legs now, his thumb against the sweet little nub at the top of her quim, and he was rubbing it frantically - it sent little shock waves up through her whole body, and she clenched around him. 

"You're so thick," she said, which wasn't exactly what she'd meant to say - she wasn't sure what she'd _meant_ to say, but this had popped out - and he chuckled breathlessly. 

"I get that a lot," he said, in a rough voice, "but smarts aren't everything." He gave another hip roll, his cock as deep inside of her as he could get it, and he kept grinding. She was already starting to pulse around him again, a pulse that felt as deep and old as the universe. 

She was giggling. She was giggling, and it was making her twitch around his cock, which made him gasp and groan like he was drowning. He doubled down on her, his thumb working faster, and his other hand was cupping her face, his fingers soft against the leather. She arched her back, and she wished he was holding her breasts, wished he was kissing her mouth, wished... 

The pleasure swept over her like a wave, knocking her over, and she gave a hiccuping sob as the pulsing grew stronger, sending tendrils of sweet pleasure through her whole body, and then she was limp as she shook through a paroxysm, her heels digging into Dan's calves, her hips still juddering forward.

Dan kissed her on the cheek, on the forehead, his lips no doubt leaving marks on her mask. She was going to have to buff it later, but she could worry about it then, because now Dan's hips were speeding up, and then he was entirely inside of her, his cock hot and throbbing as his orgasm washed over him, his come hot and sticky. 

"Oh," Dan said thickly. "Oh, Holly..." He shivered. "Thank you for that."

"Why are you thanking me?" She cupped his cheek, and she could feel the warmth of him through the leather of her glove. She wanted to touch him, she wanted to press their skin as close together as she could. She wanted to feel his breath on her face, wanted to kiss him, wanted... wanted everything.

Wanted a whole bunch of things that she wasn't supposed to want. 

"Because," Dan said, "you gave me the gift of your body. It'd be rude of me to not thank you."

"I didn't give you the gift of my body," Holly said sharply, sitting up. Now she remembered why she didn't sleep with civilians. They had a lot of backwards notions about a lot of things. "It's still my body."

"Right, right," Dan said quickly, then; "sorry."

"I'm going to go to bed," Holly told him. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Right," said Dan, and he gave her a nervous smile. "Sorry." 

"Goodnight," Holly said, and she stood up. There was... fluid dripping down from inside of her, smearing across her thighs, but she could deal with that later. 

"Goodnight," Holly repeated, and then she was walking into her own bedroom, closing the door behind her. She leaned back against it, and she took a deep breath, then pulled her mask off, letting the cool air caress her face like a lover. _Like Dan would caress my face, if he was given the chance_ , she thought, and that made her stomach clench in ways that she didn't entirely understand. 

* * *

Holly cleaned herself up, and then she lay in her bed, all the lights off. She stared up at her ceiling, and she tried to get her thoughts into something resembling order. What was going on with her life? Why had she done that? Not that she... regretted it, per se, but she was still hot between the legs, and her heart was beating in her throat. She'd let his prick into her quim, but she hadn't let him see her face. Something about that felt off, although she didn't know how much of it was just her being spooked about the death. Civilians tended to have sex after funerals - something about the reminder that they could die at any time made their blood race. She had never thought of herself that way - she dealt with blood and death her whole life. Plague Doctors began dissection classes when they were pretty young, and as far as she was concerned, a body was a body. 

Angela had just _rotted_. 

Holly shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself, then rolled onto her stomach, clutching at her pillow and pressing her face into it. People didn't just rot - the last time she'd seen decomposition like that, it had been in the corpse garden, where people who let Plague Doctors have their bodies sometimes ended up, so the Plague Doctors could study the different things that happened to a body after it died. That body had been dead for a very long time, and this body... wasn't. 

Angela had been alive. She'd been telling Holly about her plans to build a hen house, when Holly had been examining the withered arm, and now... now. 

_Rotted_. 

She wished she could ask Dan into her bed, ask him to hold her, his face in her hair and his arms around her. She wished Dan was a Plague Doctor, so he could _understand_ all of this, understand the horror of it. Or was she underestimating him?

Holly groaned into her pillow. She was chasing her own tail, and she could tell, even in her current anxious state. She was half tempted to ask Dan in here, to use his mouth on her again. That had shut her mind up, at the very least. 

She sighed, closing her eyes. She’d talk to Dan about it in the morning, maybe work something up. It was too late to ask him to don the mask - too late by about thirty-something years. He’d look handsome in the mask, though - she was, admittedly, biased, but… still. 

She might even tell him someday, assuming they kept talking when all of this strangeness was over and dealt with.

* * *

Holly woke up in the morning, and knew that something was wrong. Her body didn’t… fit. She couldn’t explain it any other way - she woke up, and the skin she was lying in somehow didn’t fit her. It was wearing someone else’s shoes - perfectly broken in, but still somehow not suited for her. She sat up, rubbing her jaw, which was itchy, and her fingers rasped across… stubble.

Wait.

Stubble?

 

Holly ran her fingers across her face, and found it… strange. Her jaw was too broad, somehow, and that was indeed stubble under the padds of her fingers. She felt along her head, and tangled her hands in it, finding it shorter. Her hands went across her own chest, and she found her chest flat, dusted with hair. Her stomach was still mostly flat, her hips were narrower, and then she was grabbing between her legs and... that was a prick.

It was a prick, and when she squeezed it, there was the sensation of it in her hand and the sensation of it in her hand, and she could feel both of them in an endless feedback loop that was making her heart beat that much faster. She was terrified she’d have a heart attack, panting like she had been running. Her cock - it was _her_ cock, wasn’t it? - got harder in her hand, and the pleasure that began to curl in her stomach like a pillbug. She shivered, pulling her hand off of her cock, and she covered her face with both hands, still shivering.

Was this what Dan had gone through? No wonder he’d been so spooked. The very _wrongness_ of it all was eating away at her like acid - it was just as bad as when she’d seen Angela, and that was hyperbolic, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like she was rotting from the inside out - it was just… well, her. She was a different shape, true, but she was still _herself_ , right? She’d talk to Dan about this, at the very least - he of all people would be able to understand this. She’d have to perform an examination on herself as well, when she got to the… oh.

She couldn’t go to her clinic, could she? Not with the Plague Doctors from the University still investigating what happened to Angela. She had to stay home - she could fuss over the pigeons, maybe work on a few studies. Maybe it was all for the best - she didn’t know how she felt about other people seeing her like this.

People other than Dan.

It didn’t occur to her to examine the way that Dan had gone from her patient to someone who she was willing to share this moment of intimacy with. She probably didn’t have it in her to examine it too closely right now, because some small part of her mind was nothing but a terrified scream. 

* * *

Holly came out of her room wearing the clothes that she had hanging in her wardrobe. They were men’s clothes - trousers, hose. She was wearing men’s clothes, and they felt wrong, but they fit this body more than a dress would have. She was taller than she was, although still not exactly tall, as far as men went.

As far as she knew, at any rate.

Dan was awake, talking to the birds. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw her standing there. “Sorry, Sir, Holly isn’t, um, she’s isn’t awake yet, but I can knock on her door?” He didn’t seem to realize that she had come out of her own bedroom - was he that nervous, or just that absent minded?

“It’s me,” said Holly, and to her distress, found that her voice had gotten deeper. “It’s Holly.”

“What,” said Dan. No question mark, no nothing. Just a flat “what” dropping out of his mouth like a stone. 

“It’s Holly,” she said. “It’s me. I don’t know why, but I… I woke up like this, and I don’t know how to stop it.” 

Dan blinked at her, clearly flabbergasted. “How do I know it’s you, and not just someone playing a trick?” His voice was suspicious.

“Your name is Dan Avidan, and you looked like a woman two days ago,” said Holly. “Not just… not just looked like a woman, you had a quim. You were part of a musical troupe, only they’ve somehow forgotten you. You grew up next to the river, but the only ducks you remember were at the duck pond.” 

“Oh,” Dan said thickly. “Oh, you are Holly.” He sat down on the couch heavily, his face in his hands. “So it happened to you?”

“It happened to me,” Holly echoed. “I’m… I’m like this.” She made a vague hand motion towards herself. “But you remember me? As myself, I mean.”

“Holly Conrad,” Dan said promptly. “Plague Doctor. You helped me, and now I guess I’m going to help you.” 

"I don't... I don't know how you'd help me," Holly said. She was aware of how... stupid she sounded, but she couldn't turn it off. There was an elemental _wrongness_ to this, and she was frankly amazed that Dan hadn't clawed his own skin off in how awful it was. 

"I'm here," said Dan, and he took a step closer to her, so that they were almost nose to nose. Well, his nose against the nose of her mask. He pressed his forehead against hers, and he put his hands on her shoulders. "It's scary, but I'm here. What can I do for you, right now? What do you need me to do?"

"Am I..." She paused, the horror swirling in her gut like a storm. She was _crying_ behind her mask, tears pooling in her mask, then dripping out from under it. She was shaking, and Dan was holding her, rocking her, making shooshing noises.

"You're you," he said. "You're a woman. You're Holly Conrad. You're... I don't know what your face looks like, but you like birds, and you're a Plague Doctor. You're sweet, and you're kind, and you're funny." He rubbed her back, and he was rocking her. She was taller now, and that felt weird, too - the top of her head was against his cheek now, but he kissed her forehead, still making soothing noises. 

"Will anyone be able to... to tell? What if they remember me as someone else?" She snuffled into his shoulder. 

"If they do, then... well, if they do, it isn't your problem. You're you, okay? You're yourself, you're the person who I... who had to deal with the body yesterday. And that person was a lady. You're a lady, you're a lady who I care about. A lady who had to live through all of that." He had his big hand on the back of her neck, and he squeezed it. 

She shuddered, a convulsive shudder, and her toes curled in her shoes. She cried like her heart was breaking - she cried like she was trapped in a body that wasn't her own, because she was, wasn't she? She was still shaking, her teeth chattering, and he made a quiet noise.

"Do you want me to get breakfast? I have a little extra money, we could go to an eating house, having something indulgent. Something with... something with chestnuts, you said you liked chestnuts? The bakery makes chestnut cream, or... or something else, if you want something else." 

She wanted to take her mask off. She _ached_ for it - to pull the mask off, so he could see her face. But this wasn't... her face. She didn't want him to look at her face and see echoes of whatever face this was. 

"I.. .I'll be alright," Holly said, and she sniffed. She needed to wipe her eyes, blow her nose. She was a mess. "We should go to the University. Talk to Brian about this, see if we can figure out how to fix it." She rested her head on Dan's shoulder, and Dan wrapped an arm around her shoulders, giving her a squeeze. 

"He said he couldn't help me," Dan said slowly, "but it's been a day. Maybe he's done some research."

"Right," said Holly, and she gave another gusty sigh. "At least I can... at least I don't have to worry about any of my patients seeing me."

"Where are your patients going to go? Since your clinic is shut down, I mean," said Dan. 

"There are other Plague Doctors around it," said Holly. "They'll direct my patients towards other clinics." She sighed, rubbing her temples. "I guess I should be glad that at least they didn't put us into any kind of quarantine." 

"That was an offer?" Dan's nose wrinkled.

"Of course it was," said Holly. "They would have quarantined us, poked and prodded us within an inch of our lives, and then left us in an exam room somewhere for the rest of who knows how long." She sighed, and she stretched. She wanted to scrub her face, wanted to dunk her whole self into the cold water, wanted... what did she want? She remembered Dan inside of her quim, his face so close to her own. Her cock twitched in her trousers, and she went stiff. _Oh no_. 

"Holly?" Dan's voice was very gentle. "Holly, what's wrong?"

"Why do you think something is wrong?" Holly's voice cracked like a plate. It was deeper now, she noticed. When had that happened?

"Because you went very stiff," Dan said, his voice gentle. "You're breathing very hard. What's wrong?"

"I'm... I think something is happening," Holly said haltingly. "A physical thing."

"What kind of physical thing?" More of his gentle voice.

"My... my genitals," she said awkwardly. "I don't know what they're doing. Well, no, I, uh... I know what they're doing, but I don't know how to... I don't..." The panic was rising up in her throat again, like a rat trying to claw its way out.

"Do you have... is it hard?" Dan's voice was still gentle. 

"Yeah," Holly said. "I'm trying to make it stop, but it won't... go down."

"Flex your leg," Dan said, "flex it hard. And think of something that isn't... you know, that isn't nice." 

"Right," Holly said, her voice shaky. The arousal that was twisting in her gut seemed to be getting stronger - she wanted to pull her mask off, wanted to kiss him, her tongue in his mouth, her nose pressed against his. Wanted to feel his breath on her face. 

She flexed her calf, and she named the primary muscle groups of the face, because skinless faces had always given her the creeps. She took a deep breath, still shaking, as it slowly went down, and she laughed wetly. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry that I'm... that I'm so upset about this."

"When I woke up without my prick," said Dan, in a halting sort of way, "I threw up. I couldn't stop shaking, and then I cried." 

"Yeah?" 

“Yeah,” said Dan, “although I’ve always cried at the drop of a hat in the past.” He shrugged, looking faintly embarrassed. “I’ve got a very soft heart.”

“I… I appreciate it,” Holly said quietly. “Your soft heart. It’s been… it’s been very helpful.” 

Dan smiled at her, his expression faintly rueful. “Someone to be sick when there’s a dead body? That sure is helpful.”

“I was nearly sick, too,” Holly said sharply. “That wasn’t… that wasn’t just a dead body. It was _wrong_.”

“Right,” said Dan, and he sighed. “I’m sorry. This has all been so…” He trailed off.

“Much?” Holly hazarded a guess.

“Much,” Dan agreed. “It’s all been so much.” 

There was a knock on the door, jolting the both of them out of whatever trance they’d been in, and Holly took a deep breath, smoothing her hands over her hips. They were the wrong shape, but they were still attached to her, so it was something, right?

“One moment,” she called, and she went to answer the door.

There was a Plague Doctor on the other side of the door - a woman, with a narrow face under her mask. Holly tried not to stare with too much longing - there was a fierce, painful ache in her chest. That was supposed to be the kind of body _she_ had. “Doctor Holland Conrad?” The Plague Doctor had a surprisingly sweet voice.

“Yes,” Holly said, hazarding that was her name in this universe. 

“Please come to the University tomorrow morning at ten o’clock to discuss the things we found at your clinic,” said the Plague Doctor.

“Yes,” Holly said. “Of course. Thank you.” 

“In the meantime, please stay home for the day,” said the Plague Doctor. “Do you need someone to help you with acquiring food and whatnot?”

“No,” said Holly. “No, I’ll be alright for that. Thank you very much.”

The Plague Doctor bowed, and then she was walking off, leaving Holly alone in her own house. She closed the door, and she turned to Dan.

“So,” Dan said. “What’s the, uh… the plan for the day?”

“We’re to stay in for the day,” said Holly.

“Oh,” said Dan. 

“Well,” Holly said, “more accurately, _I’m_ to stay in for the day. Should you wish to go out and about, you can do that.” She was sorely tempted to go lie down in her bed and not leave it until she went to the university. But that wouldn’t work, would it?

“I’ll keep you company,” said Dan, and he smiled at her. “Besides,” he said, and now his expression got a little more wobbly, “it’s not like anyone is going to remember me around here anyway, right?” 

“Oh.” Holly said it anyway. “Would you… would you get us breakfast? I’ll give you money.” 

“Of course,” said Dan. “What would you like me to get?” 

Holly dug through her purse, coming back with a handful of coins. “Something sweet,” she told him. “I feel like being indulgent.”

He leaned down and kissed her forehead, his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t like how much closer her face was to his, when she was this height - she was still used to looking up at him more than this. 

Her cock twitched again, and she made a face, crossing her arms over her chest. Her… flat chest. Her stomach heaved, and she sighed, sitting down on her couch. “I’m going to feed the birds while you’re getting breakfast,” she told him.

“That sounds like a good plan,” said Dan, as he pulled his boots on, lacing them up quickly. “Do you need anything special for the birds?”

“No, they’ve got more than enough food,” said Holly. “They should be fine.”

“I’ll be back,” said Dan, opening the front door and giving a little half wave. 

* * *

Holly, lacking anything else to do, cleaned the cages. She took them into the yard out back, and she rolled her sleeves up, using bucket after bucket of soapy water, letting the birds roost in the small coop that she’d set up for them. She let herself fall into the familiarity of the task - transfer the birds to the coop, rinse out the cage, scrub it, dry it, put the birds back in.

Dan must have come back at some point, but he didn’t bother her - he did take cages, or talk to the birds, but otherwise he didn’t talk to her. Maybe he saw how anxious she was, or maybe he needed some time to himself to think as well. 

By the time Holly came back inside, she was sweating, perspiration dripping down her face, her sides, the backs of her knees. _I could, in theory, take my shirt off_ , Holly thought. _Everyone except Dan remembers me as a man, and men can take their shirts off when they’re performing manual labor_. 

Sort of. 

That was a weird thing to think of. She wasn’t sure if it was an advantage or not. 

By the time she was done, it was afternoon, and Dan was sitting down on her couch, reading a book that he’d balanced on his stomach. There was some kind of baked good wrapped in newspaper on the table beside him, and he smiled at her when he saw her. “Hello,” he said. “I thought that maybe you wanted to have a chance to work out your… y’know, feelings.” He cleared his throat, looking faintly embarrassed. “I know when I’m worried about things, doing stuff with my hands can help.”

“Right,” said Holly, dropping onto a chair and stretching her legs out. She had a lot more leg now. She shifted, and then she winced. Her… her sack was sticking to her leg with sweat, and that was singularly unpleasant. Why didn’t men spend all of their time rearranging their… downstairs, if it was always this inconvenient? 

“I like to wash dishes, personally,” Dan added, as Holly took the wrapped parcel and began to untie the string around it. “Something about making it… clean, so that I have proof that I’ve done something. If that makes sense?” 

"That makes sense," said Holly. "One of the things I like about medicine is that it's very... immediate in certain ways. And even when it's _not_ immediate, you know you're pursuing something bigger than you are. Something that will help people." 

Her mask - which had been an extension of her face for more than half of her life - seemed to fit strangely. It was closer around her jaw.. but then again, she had more jaw. But then again-then again, this mask was also fitted for _this_ face. 

"Are you alright?" Dan shot her a worried look, as he sat on the couch, taking out a chestnut cream bun and handing it over to her. 

"I'm alright," Holly said, and she made a face. "I feel as if I'm wearing... clothing that doesn't fit. Only it's my bones."

Dan winced. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know how horrible it is." He cleared his throat, and now he looked faintly embarrassed. "Would you feel more comfortable in... you know, women's clothes?"

Holly paused, giving it a think. The clothing she was wearing was a bit odd, yes, but she had worn trousers before. She knew how to move in trousers, knew how to sit comfortably, knew what to do with her legs. Although now there was just so much _more_ leg, and she didn't know what to do with _that_. "It's not the clothes," she said at last. "It's the body."

"I can't really... tell the difference," Dan admitted. "If you were in a dress, you'd probably be pretty much identical to a lady Plague Doctor."

"Other Plague Doctors would be able to tell," Holly said promptly. 

"When are the other Plague Doctors going to finish the... you know, whatnot, at your clinic?" Dan wiped a glob of chestnut cream off of his chin with a ridiculous thumb, and licked it off. 

Holly's eyes were glued to the way his tongue darted out, and she imagined that same tongue on the head of her prick. Which wasn't actually her prick, but it was still attached to her, with nerves and muscles and nerve tissue. She remembered the sensation of his tongue on her the night before, and tried to translate it. 

Oh, this was exhausting. She didn't have it in her to constantly going from indifferent to aroused. She groaned, and she took a bite of her bun. At least the chestnut cream was delicious, filling her mouth with the deep sweetness. 

"I don't know," she said. "Someone should come... at some point, to inform us - to inform _me_ \- of what's going on, but until then, we just need to stay put." She sighed again. "I should probably use this an excuse to finally work on all of those things that I've been putting off."

"Anything I can do to help?" Dan rested his elbow on his thigh, his chin in his hands. 

"You mentioned you liked washing dishes," Holly said, as the idea formed in her head.

Dan nodded. "One of my favorite chores," he said. 

"Good to know," Holly said, and she smiled at him - her mask was pushed up enough that he could just see her mouth. 

* * *

They washed beakers. Beakers, flasks, bowls, cups. There were piles of crockery and glassware heaped about the back garden, as the both of them scrubbed. It was... well, to be honest, it was fairly boring, but it was an enjoyable kind of boring. She let Dan talk at her, half tuning him out, chiming in occasionally if he asked a question. 

It felt... wrong, to be scrubbing like this without any movement of her chest. It was equally weird to not be wearing her corset, and having her stomach moving freely. She was taking deeper breaths - she had so much more chest this way, as if her breasts had simply flattened and taken up more real estate.

That was a very odd way of looking at it, and she almost immediately backed out, because... no. She wrinkled her nose, and she glanced at Dan - he was talking about his childhood pet, a dog named Princess.

"We called her Princess because she was the prettiest puppy in the whole litter," Dan said earnestly, his fingers delicate around the rim of a particularly fiddly piece of glass work. "She was a very sweet dog. She lived to an old age, too!"

"That's nice," said Holly. 

"How old is your oldest bird?" 

"Paco? He's almost twenty five," said Holly. "He belonged to my grandmother."

"Oh, wow," said Dan. "I didn't know that birds could live that long! Did they let you keep him when you were in the University?" 

"Yeah," said Holly. "He's a good boy." She was smiling behind her mask, although there was no way for him to tell, what with the mask.

"You know, it's weird," said Dan. "I'm still learning how to read your... you know, your body language. Only it's weirder than that, because it's still _your_ body language, just... written in a font I don't entirely understand."

"You seem to know a lot about fonts, for a musician," Holly said, her voice teasing as she carefully washed a flask that had been brewing acid. 

"I've studied," Dan protested. "And, well, as People of the Book, we've had to deal with a million and a half different fonts for our holy book. Not all of them are legible."

"Do you know the language of your people? For the holy book, I mean," said Holly. There were Plague Doctors from amongst the People of the Book, although no that many of them - they had their own rules about the things you did with bodies, or the types of people to spend time around. Anyway, at the end of the day, a Plague Doctor was a Plague Doctor. 

"No," said Dan. "My father spoke it, when I was a kid, but I don't really have it anymore. You know how it is."

Holly nodded. She didn't remember much of her own childhood, before she began her training. 

“So I know a bit about fonts,” Dan continued. “And you seem to currently be written in one that you don’t like very much.” He paused, and then he was frowning. “That was a horrible metaphor.”

“I have heard better ones,” Holly admitted, “but it wasn’t _too_ bad. There aren’t a lot of ways to describe… this, are there?” She indicated herself.

Dan nodded, his expression rueful. “This is a uniquely weird situation,” he agreed. The sun came out from behind a cloud, and it sparkled off of the water of the river, just across the road from her. 

Holly looked over at it and she frowned. Something was… off. Something else - something that wasn’t related to the way she was in a body that wasn’t the one she was born in. “Dan,” she said, “have I always lived by the river?” She looked at its teeming red waters, as it made its way busily along the bank.

“I mean,” he said, “you’ve lived here as long as I’ve known you, but I haven’t known you that long. But the river has always been there.” Now he was frowning.

“Are you sure?” She looked back down a the pile of glassware in front of her. It didn’t make her head hurt the way the river did. 

"Well," said Dan, "it's not as if a river can just... show up. Rivers are a part of the landscape, and it takes something major to make the landscape change. And if it was something major you'd... remember it."

"Right," said Holly, then; "I'm gonna bring this load into the house."

"Sounds like a plan," said Dan. 

_A river is a part of the landscape_ , Holly thought, as she hauled the crate full of glass into her house. In a weird way, this quarantine was doing her a favor - she was getting to all of the dumb chores that she'd been sitting on for weeks, if not months. 

When she was stopping in the front room, there was a knock on the door. She went to open it, then was seized with a moment of panic. She wasn't wearing her Plague Doctor's coat, and the flatness of her chest was evident. The trousers were... well, they weren't _tight_ as far as trousers went - she'd seen tight, as far as trousers went. But there was still evidence of the... heaviness between her legs. It was different when Dan saw her like this - he at least remembered what she looked like without it. 

Sort of.

There was another, louder knock, and then she opened her front door, to be face to face with a Plague Doctor she didn't recognize. _Although that doesn't mean much, if they're stuck like me_ , she thought, and her heart beat a little faster.

"Doctor Holland Conrad?" The Plague Doctor had a breathy voice.

"I'm Doctor Conrad, yes," said Holly, because she didn't want to get into... all of that.

"Come to the University tomorrow morning, at eleven of the clock," said the Plague Doctor. "Come to the chamber of the Council." 

"Right," said Holly. "May I bring my... assistant, as a witness?" They'd changed the time, but that wasn't unusual. At least they kept her in the loop. 

The Plague Doctor nodded. Non-Plague Doctors were sometimes allowed into the Council chamber, although never without an escort. 

"Bring your documentation," the Plague Doctor said, and then they bowed to Holly. 

Holly bowed back, and then they were walking off, and Holly was standing in her door frame, watching the people go by. They were mostly ignoring her, but then again, her neighbors were no doubt used to her by now.

"Is everything alright?" Dan called.

"Yes, sorry," said Holly, turning around and shutting the door behind her. "Everything is fine."

Dan's hands were pink, and he had his sleeves rolled up past his elbows. "Who was that?"

"We're going to speak before the Council tomorrow," said Holly.

Dan's face went chalky. "The Council?"

"We're not in trouble," Holly said, and she reached out impulsively, taking Dan's hand in her own and squeezing their fingers together. The blackness of her gloves stood out against the paleness of his skin, and she was alarmed at how... _big_ her hands were now. She clung to him tighter, instead of yanking her hand away - she needed all the comfort she needed right now. 

"Why are we speaking before the Council, if we're not in trouble?" Dan tucked a piece of curly hair behind one ear.

"We need to give our testimony of what we saw," said Holly. "Because... well, frankly, I wouldn't believe it if you told it to me." She sighed, and stretched, her back arching, her spine cracking. 

Dan's eyes were roving over her, and she flushed behind her mask, licking her lips. He was looking at her the same way he had when he'd been on his knees in front of her.

Holly cleared her throat, and she smoothed her hands over the tops of her thighs. They were sweating inside of her gloves, and she was shaking. She was getting hard again, and she wasn't sure of what to do with that. 

"Holly?" Dan sounded faintly nervous. "Are you alright?" 

"I'm not used to this body," Holly said thickly, then; "we should get back to work." 

"Right," said Dan. He reached a hand out, cautiously, and he put it on her shoulder. "I know this is... scary," he said, "but please know that it's going to be alright." He gave her a slightly anxious smile, and she smiled back at him in spite of herself, even if he couldn't see it. She cupped his cheek, her thumb against his cheekbone, and his stubble rasped under the leather of her glove.

"Do we have more washing up to do?" Dan's voice vibrated through her hand, up the bones of her wrist, and it made all the little hairs on her arms stand on end.

"Yeah," said Holly, and she let go of him. "If there's one thing I've learned since starting my own practice, there is _always_ more washing up to do." 

Dan snorted. "I think that's life in general," he informed her. "Always more washing to do."

"Well," she said, "you've done me a big favor, with all of this. I've been meaning to get to this for months.” 

"Right," said Dan. “You must build up a lot of dishes, doing what you do.” 

"Oh, definitely," said Holly. "It's the vocation of the Plague Doctors to pursue knowledge, above all else." A thought was entering her mind - a thought that was inspiring horror and arousal in equal measure, and disgust at the arousal, and annoyance at the disgust, and...

Having emotions was complicated. Very complicated. Also overrated. Sometimes, she wished she could just turn them off. 

"What's the weirdest thing you've ever done? Like, in the pursuit of knowledge," said Dan, as the two of them made their way back to the backyard, to the big soapy bucket and the crates of more glassware. 

"I've done some pretty ridiculous things," Holly said, then; "do you think you could do me a favor?" 

"Certainly," Dan said, without hesitation. "What sort of favor?"

"Could you collect some river water for me?" She grabbed a newly cleaned flask with a cork stopper embedded in it, and she handed it over to him. "I want to examine it."

Dan's expression turned uneasy. "Haven't you gotten river water before?" He transferred the flask from one hand to another, back and forth. It was faintly hypnotizing. 

"I've never examined it," Holly said. She didn't think she'd ever actually gotten a good look at it to begin with - she couldn't remember interacting with it at all, which was strange. It was a river - it was a river, right outside her door, and she'd been known to test the soil, to test the plants around her. Holly liked to know the balance of things around her - why hadn't she ever taken stock of the river?

"And you want me to... to go get some river water? You want me to touch it, with my bare hands?" Dan's face was contorting - as if she'd asked him to go pick up a turd in the street, instead of just collecting some water. Although the idea of any of that water touching... well, anything sent a shudder of revulsion through her so intense that she thought she might throw up. 

"No," Holly said, "no, never mind." Why was the idea so disgusting? She shuddered, and wiped her hands across her thighs. 

"Are you sure?" Dan was looking at her with those wide hazel eyes of his, and his expression was so sincere it made her stomach knot up. "I can do it, if you really want me to."

"No," Holly said. "No, never mind. I had... I had an idea." The idea seemed just out of reach - something about the river, something about the changes - but then it was gone, and she was just left shivering, her whole face curled up behind her mask. 

"Oh," said Dan, and he carefully put down the flask. "Is there anything else you need?"

"No," Holly said. "At least... nothing you can provide." _Give me my own body back. Give me the sense of the world back_. Although... if things hadn't gone like this, would she have ever met Dan? She was already attached to him - something about holding someone's hair back as they vomited over some horrific wrongness really brought on the attachment, didn't it?

"I'm sorry I can't provide it," Dan said, and he said it so _sincerely_ that it tugged at Holly's heartstrings. 

"It's alright," Holly said, and she reached out, squeezing his fingers. "It's not your fault."

He squeezed her fingers back, then let go. His hands were all pruned up, red from the hot water. "Things will sort themselves out eventually," he said, his voice cheerful. "And it's not like people can forget you, right?" There was a fixed air to his expression - he looked like he was trying very hard to keep his face from doing... whatever it was that it wanted doing. 

"Are you... are you holding up alright? About your family, I mean," Holly said. 

"I don't know if my family forgot me," Dan said, in more of that forcefully cheerful tone. "Maybe they haven't. Maybe... maybe they still remember me." 

"You can go and -"

"No," Dan interrupted. "No, I'm... I'm hoping this will pass, the same way the other things passed. The same way the "me being a girl" thing passed." 

"Right," said Holly, and she cleared her throat. It made a depressingly deep noise, and she tried not to wince. "I'm sorry I've been so wrapped up in... everything, I haven't been more supportive of the hardships that you're going through. It must be very hard for you right now." 

Dan took a step towards her, then another, until they were toe to toe. He put his hands on her face (through her mask, but oh, she hadn't felt a hand on her face in such a long time) and he pressed his forehead against hers, carefully. 

"It's okay," Dan said quietly. "We're here for each other right now, and that's the important part."

Holly sighed, leaning into the touch, angling her face down so that she wasn't spearing Dan with the beak of her mask. “I’ve never seen something like this before,” she said, very quietly. She could hear the river lapping at its bank like a hungry dog, and it set her teeth on edge. “I’ve never… things don’t just _happen_ , out of the blue. There’s a lead up. Even if a glass breaks, it’s because it was at the end of the table.”

“Right,” said Dan. She wasn’t sure if he was following along with her, or just making agreeable noises, but it was nice to have someone listening, regardless. 

“Things… things don’t just _happen_ ,” Holly repeated. She found that she was shaking, and that she wanted to take the mask off, press her face up against Dan’s. 

“They don’t,” Dan agreed.

“But it _did_.”

"Sometimes... things happen in a way you don't expect," Dan said, and his voice was gentle, so gentle.

"How do you expect time to just... skip? It was like... it was like someone had cut out a piece of a book, and then pasted the two parts before and after." Holly was spiraling. She could _tell_ she was spiraling, going deep into her own brain, burrowing into her brain like a maggot. The panic was still worming its way up her throat, down her back, filling her up like water in a glass.

And then Dan was holding her. He was holding her, making soothing noises, and she was crying again, only her crying didn't sound like herself, because her voice was... different. Deeper.

"You just need to hold on," Dan said quietly. "You can do it. C'mon, let it out, it's alright. Just let yourself feel. It's okay." He was rocking her, his hands rubbing her back, and she shuddered, still snuffling in her mask. She was going to have to take her mask off, wipe her face off before it got itchy and sticky. But she didn't want to do anything but stand here and be held by Dan, as she caught her breath.

"I'm trying," Holly said, and her voice was thick.

"You're doing great," Dan said, and he nuzzled into her hair. "You're doing great, okay? I mean it."

"Okay," Holly mumbled, and she sighed, carefully disentangling herself from Dan. "We should... we should probably clean up."

"Right," said Dan. "I'll bring things inside, you sort them into wherever they need to go?"

"That sounds like a good plan," said Holly. She squeezed his fingers, her gloves creaking, and then went back into the house.

* * *

The rest of the day passed uneventfully - if "full of the kind of brain breaking terror associated with being in the wrong sort of body" could be considered uneventful. It was probably a testament to the human mind's ability to adapt to anything it needed to, or... something. But by the time evening was drawing, she wasn't wincing every time she turned too quickly and didn't feel her breasts moving with her. By the time they were eating dinner, she was just tired, in her bones.

Tired, and aroused.

Maybe it was Dan - something about the way his face changed like the sky was getting her all worked up. Maybe it was the intensity of what had happened to the both of them - some kind of shared hardship, bonding them together like glue. Or maybe she had just been more lonely than she was aware of, and it was all rushing back to her now. She sat on her couch next to Dan, eating bread and cheese with chickpea spread, and she tried not to panic. She had an erection, and the arousal was throbbing through her like a heartbeat - she was _aware_ of her body, aware of the way the blood moved through it, aware of the way that her breath filled her lungs. This wasn't her body, but it was at the same time. 

"Holly?" Dan's hand was on her shoulder, and he was making a point of looking into the eyes of her mask, instead of staring at her beak like he usually did.

"Sorry," Holly said thickly. "I, uh... I got a bit lost in my head."

"Of course," Dan said. "You know so much, it's probably pretty crowded in there."

Holly paused. "What?"

"You know," Dan said, and now he looked faintly embarrassed. "I'm, uh... I always imagine people's minds being like libraries. So there's all the different... shelving, everything filed away by subject, and when there's a lot of shelving, it can be difficult to keep track of everything."

"Right," said Holly. "That makes sense." She'd never really visualized what the inside of her own head looked like, but then again, she'd dissected enough brains that she more or less knew the theory behind where things were and what they did. 

"So... I figure you've got a lot more shelves than I do," Dan said, and he cleared his throat, looking faintly embarrassed. "Although I know that's silly."

Holly shrugged. "I don't think so," she told him. "I mean, I don't think it's silly, but I also don't think that's true. I know more about some things than you do, but there are probably plenty of things that you know more about than I do."

"Yeah? Like what?" Dan rested his elbows on his thighs, looking over at her.

"Like music," said Holly. "I don't know a lot about music, although I do find it very interesting."

"Music isn't that complicated," Dan said, and then he laughed, self conscious. "Or important. At least, not as important as medicine is."

"I'd disagree with that," Holly said. "Music is pretty important. It keeps people human. Sometimes it even helps them get better."

"Do you think so?" Dan looked skeptical.

"A few of the people in my order have studied what music does for people, medically," Holly said. "It was found that music can help people relax, can help them process things. Some people even think that some kinds of music can help people process pain differently.”

“Process pain… differently?” Dan looked intrigued. “Like how?”

“I… honestly don’t know,” Holly admitted, and she laughed, self conscious. Her laugh still didn’t sound like her own, and she tried not to wince too hard as she did it. “It’s… it’s complicated, and not a thing I’ve studied. I do know that certain kinds of music can make the rhythm of the heartbeat change.”

“Right,” said Dan. “My grandmother, she once said that music and magic were similar. Because they only had a two letter difference.”

Holly nodded. She didn’t know much about magic - she knew alchemy, which was sometimes _called_ magic, but alchemy followed a set of rules that made sense. Magic was just… you waved a wand and stuff happened. People thought that Plague Doctors did magic, but they didn’t - not really. 

“So,” Dan trailed off, “are you going to be… alright? Tonight, I mean.”

“I’ll be fine,” Holly said automatically, although she didn’t know if that was true or not. “I’ll be fine,” she repeated.

“Well, if you need anything, I’ll be here,” Dan said, indicating the couch, surrounded by all the bird cages.

The birds hadn’t been afraid of her when she fed them, at least. Maybe they didn’t remember her as anything else. Why did Dan remember her like this, if he was from this universe? If this was a new universe, and not just… who knew what else it might be. It was easier to go into the specifics of that sort of thing than it was to concentrate on all of the ways that her body wasn’t right. 

Her heart beat very fast in her ears, and it made a faint whooshing sound, her face heating up. 

“Holly?” Dan’s voice seemed to be coming from a long way off. “Holly, are you alright?”

“I’m alright,” Holly said, her tongue thick in her mouth. “I’m fine. Absolutely fine.” And then she passed out.

* * * 

Holly woke up in her darkened room, lying flat on her back and staring up at her ceiling. Her face felt… odd, and it took a second to realize that she wasn’t wearing her mask. The air was cool on her face, and the usual wave of paranoia passed over her, leaving her panicky. How had she gotten here, like this?

“Hey,” said Dan, and Holly realized that he was sitting on her chair in the corner. “I, uh, don’t worry. I can’t see anything.” 

“What?” Holly’s eyes adjusted pretty quickly to the darkness of the room - she could make out the wild mane of his hair, the curve of his chin. He had something tied over his face - had he made a blindfold?

“You sounded like you were having trouble breathing,” Dan said, “and I know, uh… I know you don’t want me to see your face. So I drew the curtains and I’m wearing a blindfold. I can’t see anything, but I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

It was such a tiny act of kindness - an act of kindness that felt so very _him_ \- that Holly started crying. Maybe it was everything else crashing down on her head, or maybe it was just the warmth of him - how had this strange man stumbled into her life? She clung to herself, and she sobbed as if her heart was breaking. It still sounded strange, to hear her own sobbing coming out with that strange, strange voice. She took a deep, gasping breath, still shaking, and then she went limp in bed. 

“Holly?” Dan was stepping towards her now, and she looked at the long line of his body as he made his way towards her. “Hey, it’s… it’s going to be alright.” One of his big hands was wrapped around her ankle now, squeezing it, and she sighed, flexing her foot, making her ankle move in his hand. 

“Hi,” Holly said, and her voice was rough and stuffy from crying.

“Hi,” said Dan, and he sat down on the bed next to her. She looked at the profile of him, with the blindfold obscuring his eyes, and her cock began to get stiff again.

“Dan?” Holly curled her toes, pressing them into his wrist. “Can I ask an awkward question?”

“Always,” said Dan. “I mean, you’ve already examined all of me. How can it be any different?”

_I never gave him his physical examination today_ , Holly thought with a pang. _I got too caught up in all the… everything_. “Dan, is it… is it normal to get very aroused at the drop of a hat?” 

“It is for me,” Dan said after a moment. “I don’t know if… you know, all people like… us? Like me?”

“People with this kind of body,” Holly suggested, since it was the least objectionable way of describing it.

“Right,” said Dan. “People with… you know, pricks, sometimes said pricks get very excited about things out of the blue.”

“Right,” Holly echoed, and she covered her face with both hands. She was still wearing her gloves, and they were smooth against her face. With a shiver, she pulled them off, and then she was reaching out for Dan’s face. She wanted to feel his skin against her own, and... well. She didn’t want to show him her face - or maybe she wanted to show him her face, but this wasn’t _her_ face - but she wanted to feel him. 

“Is yours, uh… do you know how to handle… your own?” Dan cleared his throat, and he sounded embarrassed. “I know that… I know that having a body that didn’t work the way it was supposed to freaked me out. If you don’t want to… you know, deal with it, I also know a few tricks to make it stop… doing that.”

“I think that I want to…” Holly tried to articulate her thoughts, “I want to know the other side. It’s my job, as a Plague Doctor, to study things. To catalog it.” She hadn’t really done much of an examination of her new body beyond a cursory one, which was a problem - she probably should have. If she was still in it tomorrow, she’d do that. If she didn’t also want to die while that was happening, because… well. 

Well.

But it was less scary in the dark. It was easier to think about these things, when it was just her and Dan in the darkness. She could feel the warmth of his body, and her own body was still just… here. She was the darkness behind her eyes, after all - a mind being carried around in a shell of meat. She’d known that since the first time she’d dissected someone, and seen the way that the body moved.

She was just a body here, and Dan was just a body - their _selves_ were something else, and that was what mattered, right? At least, in theory. 

"The other side?" Dan nuzzled into her hand, and he gave a long, gusty sigh, his eyes fluttering closed. "Are you not wearing your gloves?"

"I don't know what else to do," Holly said, still quiet. "I... what happened to Angela, what's happening to _me_..." She swallowed, and brought her hand up to his hair, tangling her fingers through it. It was more wiry than she'd expected it to be, and she tugged on it, gently. 

Dan moaned, and then his cheek got hot against her hand. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I'm... I'm sensitive." 

"Sensitive," Holly echoed, and she tugged his hair again. 

He moaned, and her cock jumped. That was... unexpected.

"I'm supposed to be doing something for you," Dan said gently, and then he was disentangling her fingers from his hair, and his hand was going... towards her face? She could barely make it out in the dimness, but still.

She gently pushed his hand away. "Not ready for that yet," she said quietly.

"Of course," Dan said, and he squeezed her shoulder. "Do you... what do you want me to do? Do you want me to pull you off? Or I can use my mouth..." 

Holly blinked, trying to sort her thoughts out. "Have you ever used your mouth like that? On a prick, I mean."

Dan cleared his throat, and he sounded faintly embarrassed now. "I've been known to, a time or two," he said. "Not... not often, but it happened a time or two when I was in the throes of youth. As it were."

Holly snickered in spite of herself. "In the throes of youth?"

"I read a lot of a certain kind of book at a formative age," Dan protested. 

"Badly written ones?" Holly hazarded.

Dan snorted, and he was close enough to her that his breath huffed onto her neck.

Holly shivered, and then she frowned, because her nipples were getting hard, but it wasn't the familiar tingle through her breasts. She closed her eyes, and she let the sensation wash over her. "Do you... do you like men?"

"I don't dislike men," said Dan, after a moment of thought. "I mostly prefer women, though."

"Do you not like me like this?" Why was Holly's stomach sinking like this?

"I like you fine," Dan told her. "Like this, like any other way. I just know that you're not exactly... comfortable like this."

"Right," Holly said, and she licked her lips. "Sorry." 

Dan's hand moved towards her face, then hovered over it for a moment, not touching her, but close enough that he probably felt the warmth of her skin. "Stop apologizing," he told her. 

"Sor -" Holly began, then cut herself off with a self conscious laugh.

"You're not this apologetic when you're doctoring," Dan said, as his hand skated across her chest and belly, which were still covered by her shirt. 

"I know what I'm doing when I'm ministering," Holly protested. "I don't... really know what I'm doing right now." 

"Right," said Dan. "That does make some sense." His hand was stroking right over the base of her cock - she was aware of it with every nerve in her body, focusing on the weight of his hand against her. 

"I do that occasionally," Holly said, and she laughed. It was more nervous laughter - she wasn't normally this anxious. It wasn't even the first time she'd ever had sex, so why was she such a wreck? 

"You're so warm," Dan said, "and you still smell like yourself." He pressed his face into her stomach, and she rested her hands on his head, her fingers digging into his hair. His scalp was warm and faintly damp, his hair wiry under her fingers. She wrapped a curl around and around her finger, and he snuggled into her, draping his lower body across her, his arms wrapped around her waist. 

"I do? I feel like I smell different." She spread her legs, and she tried not to grind forward too much - her cock was trapped in her underthings, and it was pressed up against Dan's chest. 

"I mean, it's faintly different," said Dan, "in a way that I don't know how to put into words, because I haven't studied that sort of thing."

"Do you think that I have?" Holly hadn't expected that.

"Well, maybe not in and of itself, no," said Dan, "but I know that you know how to describe things like scents and tastes. To be a Plague Doctor, you need to know how to describe symptoms and things like that, right?" 

"That's surprisingly insightful," Holly said, spreading her fingers, ruffling Dan's hair.

"I can be, occasionally," Dan said, dry as dust.

"That's not what I meant," Holly said hastily, because... welp. That was a dumb thing to say.

"I'm teasing you," Dan told her, and he pressed a kiss to her belly. “Sorry.”

“Now you’re the one apologizing,” Holly said. 

“Maybe I’m just trying to distract you from how nervous you were,” Dan countered.

“Oh,” said Holly, and she cleared her throat. She hadn’t really been paying attention to her own nerves while he had been talking to her, that was true. 

“Exactly,” said Dan, and then he was moving lower along her body, carefully unbuttoning her shirt, to kiss her stomach. His lips were very warm and very soft against the sensitive skin there, and she squirmed, her heels digging into the bed. 

It felt like she just had… more like this. More body, more bulk, more limb. She wasn’t even that much taller, or that much broader, and yet. Everything felt a bit too much. 

Dan was a grounding presence, his skin hot, his hands dry as they made their way up alon her chest, then back down again, as he kept unbuttoning down her shirt, towards the waist of her trousers.

“Are you sure you want to… with your mouth, I mean,” she said. “If that’s not exactly -”

“I’d like to,” Dan interrupted, before she could go into another spiral. “I’m curious if it will… you know, taste different.”

“Taste different,” Holly echoed.

“Since I already know what you taste like there,” he said, and he sounded faintly embarrassed. “I know it’s an odd thing to consider.” 

“I suppose,” said Holly. “You’d make a good Plague Doctor,” she said, more to fill the breathing silence than because she wanted to start a conversation. 

“Do you think so?” Dan’s hands were nervous at the waist of her underthings.

Holly paused, and then she sighed, and she let go of him. "You can do it," she said softly. "You can take them off."

"Alright," he said, and then he was untying things, and pulling them down the length of her legs. 

Holly was aware of the length of her cock, bobbing forward, a little spurt of pre-come drooling out of her, to drip along her shaft, puddling in her pubic hair. She was shaking, because the sensation was setting off the various alarm bells in the deeper parts of her brain. It wasn't _right_ , this wasn't the way she was supposed to be, this wasn't who she was. This wasn't her body, and what right did she have to ask Dan to do anything with it? And then the shaking started, and she squeezed her eyes tightly, taking deep breaths to calm down the panic that was rising in her chest like a bubble of swamp gas. It would set everything ablaze, and no, this wasn't the time for that. This was Dan - he knew her real body, he knew what she was supposed to look like, supposed to feel like, supposed to _smell_ like. What would be the harm in doing things with this strange new body she'd been dropped in? With effort, she pulled herself back, and relaxed into the bed - relaxed into _her_ bed - and stroked Dan's hair. 

Dan's breath ghosted across the wet head of her cock, and then she felt him looking up at her, the blindfold over his eyes a dark slash across his face. "Holly," he said, and his chest resonated against her thighs, his breath still ticklish against her. "Holly, you've got a lovely cock."

"Thank you," Holly said, and it was the same tone of voice she accepted compliments in for her doctoring, or her cooking.

That brought on a snicker from Dan, and then he was... _kissing the head of her cock_ , one hand cautiously wrapping around the shaft to keep it in place. His mouth was opening up, his tongue darting out, and the flat of it dragged across the head, over the slit. It brought a shuddering, twitching energy that filled her limbs, raced across her skin. It was like - and yet unlike - the sensation of his mouth on her quim, and she covered her mouth with one hand to keep from making any embarrassing noises.

Dan sighed, a huff of hot air across her belly, and then he was leaning forward, his mouth opening wider to take more of her cock, his lips delicate as they slid along the shaft. His tongue was tracing along the underside, occasionally pressing at her foreskin, then lower, to feel along the root of her cock. He pulled off with a wet noise, and he pressed an awkward, messy kiss to the inside of her thigh. 

"I... I think I like it," Holly said, aware of just how awkward she must have sounded. "When you do that. It's nice."

Another little huff of laughter, and then his mouth was moving lower, nuzzling at her sack. His hair was ticklish against her inner thighs, and she squirmed, her hands now clutching at the sheets, twisting them in her fingers. "I'm glad you think it's nice," he said, his tone grave. His mouth opened, and then he was sucking on her sack, taking one of her balls into the heat of his mouth. 

It was... it was a lot. It was utterly unlike anything she'd ever felt, and she went utterly still, just absorbing the sensation. It was... it was a lot. It was all a lot. Her cock ached to... what? Be inside of something? Be touched? It was almost completely different from arousal as she usually felt it - the urge to be filled, versus the urge to fill. And yet, somehow, they were similar. Two sides of the same coin, or something like that.

It occurred to Holly that she was losing herself in her head, as Dan's mouth made its way back up towards her shaft. She was here to document what it felt like - she needed to be more present. 

Dan pulled off of her cock, and he kept it in his hand, kissing the underside of it, gently. "You okay in there, Holly?" His voice was gentle, and so were his fingers as they traced along her belly.

Holly licked her lips, took stock. "I... I'm feeling a lot of things," she hazarded, because that was about the only thing she could be sure of.

"Are they good things? Bad things?" Dan pressed a little kiss to the head of her cock.

She shuddered convulsively, her hips jerking forward in spite of herself. "They're... they're different," she said, when she had control of her voice again. "I don't know if I like them, but I don't... dislike them either." 

"Do you want me to keep... y'know, using my mouth?" Dan cleared his throat, and he sounded bashful.

"Yes," Holly said. "Yes, please. Please continue."

"I haven't done this in a while," Dan warned. "So, uh... if it ends up being not very good -"

"I don't have anything to compare it to," Holly said, "and hopefully this will wear off quickly, so I won't have anything to compare it to."

"That is fair enough," said Dan, and then his mouth was on her again - his jaw dropping open, her shaft gliding into his mouth. He was bobbing his head now, slurping obscenely, and she was shaking as he used his mouth on her - she couldn't tell what his tongue was doing, but it was making her writhe under him, her breath coming in desperate little pants. She was sweating - it was trickling down her sides, gathering in the backs of her knees, and she was beginning to shake harder. 

Holly lost track of time - somehow - she let herself just feel what she was feeling, let it wash over her in waves. The heat of Dan's body against her own, the slickness of his mouth, the pleasure and tension that were building in her body. She rode it like a wave, and tried to let herself just feel it, taking some vague notes in the far off part of her brain that was always taking notes. 

Was that a Plague Doctor thing, or just a her thing? She wasn't entirely sure - it wasn’t as if Plague Doctors regularly discussed the interiors of their own minds that often. 

At some point, she was on the brink of orgasm, and when had _that_ happened? Dan was moving his mouth up and down her shaft, his head bobbing, his tongue darting here and there, his cheeks hollowed out. The noises he was making were… well, they were pretty obscene, but _oh_ , if was as if she was melting, the pressure building and building. She threw her head back, her back arching off of the bed, and she cried out as her orgasm fell on her like a hammer. It was a… convergence, a rushing of heat and pressure, fluid spurting out of her, and Dan was making a slightly disgusted noise (maybe? She couldn’t tell) and he was scrambling up her body - something sticky and wet was sliding out of his mouth, to puddle on her stomach, then her chest.

“Holly?” Dan’s voice was faintly nervous. “Holly, are you alright?”

Holly nodded, then remembered that he couldn’t see her. “Yes,” she said, as her cock kept twitching. “Yes, I’m alright.”

“Good,” said Dan. “Good. Did you... did you like that?” Now he sounded bashful. 

“Definitely,” Holly said earnestly. “It was… it was great. I liked it a lot.”

“Good,” said Dan. “I’m glad.”

There was an awkward moment.

“Do you want me to, uh… to do the same? For you, I mean,” said Holly.

“Honestly?” Dan rocked back on his heels, looking down at her, and Holly looked into his blindfolded face, and fancied that he was looking back at her, as if he could see _through_ the fabric of the blindfold.

“Honestly,” Holly echoed.

“I’m glad I made you come,” Dan said, “but I think that all of this is a bit weird for me. I don’t know if I could… make iron at the forge, presently.” 

Holly glanced down, and saw that he wasn’t actually hard. “Oh,” she said, and she wasn’t sure what she felt. 

“Tomorrow,” Dan promised her, and he made to get up.

“Wait,” Holly said. “Wait. Don’t go?” She hadn’t meant to say that, but… well. Everything else was so weird, so why not keep at it?

“I won’t go,” Dan promised, and he sat on the bed beside her. “What can I do for you?” 

“Stay,” Holly said quietly. “Please?”

“Right,” said Dan. “Do you… do you want me to sleep here? With you, I mean. In here. With you.”

“Please,” said Holly, and she reached out for his hand, squeezing his fingers in her own. 

"Alright," said Dan, and then he cleared his throat. He looked faintly awkward. "Is it alright if I, uh... if I take my shirt off? I can't sleep in it."

"Right," said Holly. "I should... I should take my own clothes off as well."

"Of course," said Dan. "I'll just... turn around. Tell me when I can look again?" 

"Right," Holly said, and she cleared her throat, flustered. Her cock was still out, wet and soft against her thigh. The sensation of it was... unpleasant, to say the least. Every time she shifted, she was obscenely _aware_ of it, and the way that it moved against her. She shifted, still on her back, and then she shoved it back into her pants, not particularly caring about whether she was being delicate with it or not. There was a twinge of discomfort, but then it was tucked securely in her trousers. She pulled her shirt up and off, and then... well, that was that.

She'd keep her stockings on, she'd keep her trousers on - all she needed was to not have her cock out and moving. She rolled onto her stomach, and that was a little better.

There were rustling noises from the bed next to her, and when Holly looked over, she saw that Dan was pulling his own shirt off, then his trousers. He was in just his underclothes, and his skin glowed white against the dimness. He pulled his undershirt off as well, and then there was just... all that rangy, pale skin. Holly had seen him shirtless before - she'd examined him, after all. And yet, all she wanted to do was run her hands up and down his chest, feel all of him up against her.

But not like this.

Dan climbed into the bed with her, and it took them a few minutes to work out a comfortable way for the both of them to fit into the bed in a configuration that worked for the both of them. They ended up back to back, and Dan kept the blindfold on, which Holly appreciated more than she could even put into words. It was strange - normally she was picky about how she slept; she'd never slept with another person, not since she was young enough to still be in the nursery. And yet, Dan's bony back pressed against her own was... comforting.

She fell asleep overheated, but feeling safe. Things would be alright in the morning. They had to be. 

 

* * *

Holly woke up in the morning, and she was in her own body. She didn't know how she knew it - she couldn't have explained it even if she tried to. She just knew that she was in her own body, knew it in her very bones. It was an odd thing to experience, but it was _her_ thing to experience, and she shuddered all over, clutching at herself.

Dan was still asleep, curled in a ball on his side, and she looked down at his face, still and relaxed in sleep. She brushed a piece of hair behind his ear, and pressed a kiss to his temple - a gentle brush of her lips against his cheek. Then she got up, and began to get ready for the day.

 

* * * 

Holly was feeding the birds by the time Dan woke up and ambled into the room. He was dressed and seemed to have washed his face in her basin - his hair was damp and slicked back, his face pink from all of the scrubbing. "You're you again," he said, and he wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her around the waist.

Holly let herself be squeezed, still holding one of the bird's water dishes. He stopped squeezing her, but he kept holding on to her, looking at her with a goofy expression. "I am," she told him. "Although I was myself yesterday, too."

"I mean," Dan said, "I know that you were... you, but you didn't exactly look like yourself. If that makes sense?"

"It makes sense," Holly said. "We're going to go to the University today. Are you ready?"

"Not really," Dan admitted, "but I'm gonna do it anyway."

"What are you so worried about?" Holly genuinely didn't understand his fear, but then again, she'd never understood a fear of Plague Doctors in the first place. They were her people - seeing them meant that they were where they belonged.

Dan rocked back on his heels, and he stared straight up at the ceiling, clearly trying to get his thoughts more or less under control. "My people... we're not Plague Doctors," he said. "We don't go to Plague Doctors, we don't do any of that. We'll go, if the need is dire enough, but the need is almost never dire enough."

"Most people are like that," Holly pointed out. 

"Weren't you guys originally appointed by the church?" Dan finally let go of her, helping her open the door to another cage.

"No," said Holly. "Well... the founder of our order was a priest, but he wasn't exactly high in the hierarchy."

"How was a lowly priest able to found an entire order?" Dan sounded intrigued. 

"The rest of the church had died of the Plague," said Holly. "He was the doctor of his abbey, and he had somehow survived."

"Oh," said Dan, and he looked faintly queasy. "That would, um... that would do it." 

"Indeed," said Holly. "This priest saw how holiness hadn't done anything to protect people from the Plague, and decided that we needed something other than holiness." 

"I'd like to know more about your Order, if you'd be willing to tell me," Dan said.

"When everything has calmed down," Holly told him. She didn't mention that they probably wouldn't be... in contact, after all of this died down - what was she going to do, keep him around? He was a civilian. She didn't keep civilians around. And yet.

She'd cross that bridge when she came to it.

"I'm ready to go to the University," Dan said, and he put a brave face on.

"Let me assemble my notes," Holly said. "Can you finish feeding the birds?" She barely knew the man, and already she was trusting him with her precious birds. Truly, things were changing. 

"Right," said Dan, and then there were various rustling, clanking noises as Dan went about the room, gathering the bird's food where she'd shown it to him, opening and closing cages, talking quietly to the various feathery inhabitants. 

"Do you have a lot of notes?" The cages creaked as Dan opened the doors to them - Holly was going to have to start oiling them, from the sound of it.

"I have a fair amount," said Holly, then; "I didn't take any about... well, me. From yesterday." She cleared her throat, hit with a wave of bashfulness and not sure what to do with her hands. "I should have, but... it was just so..." She stared down at her hands. 

Dan's hand came into view, and he squeezed her fingers, his thumb passing over her knuckles. "It's alright," he said. "I understand."

Holly laughed, and maybe the sound was a little wet, but at least it was recognizable as a laugh. "I think you're the only one who does," she said. 

"Brian will probably get a kick out of it," said Dan, and he was grinning a bit. "Because, y'know, you're changing, and change is... a form of movement."

"I have to admit, you've got his philosophy down pretty well," said Holly, and seh grinned at him, then realized he couldn't see her face, and she looked at him carefully, through the eyes of her mask. 

"I've had some experience with people who were on the... odder side of things," said Dan. "I was quite the rapscallion in my youth."

Holly snorted, sliding her notes into a leather briefcase, then reaching out for her walking stick. "As if you're not still a rapscallion," she told him. 

"I am the very picture of respectability," Dan said, and he put a hand on his chest, as if he were giving a speech before the House of Lords. 

Holly made a dismissive hand gesture, but she was grinning behind her mask. 

"So," said Dan, watching Holly adjust her coat. "What are we going to do, exactly?"

"We're going to go before the Counsel," Holly said, although this was at least the third time she'd explained this. "We're going to tell them what happened with Angela, what happened with you, and all of the other things that are going on."

"Are you going to talk about how the river makes you so anxious?" Dan asked it innocently, and she looked at him sharply. If he was making fun of her... but no. His face was just asking her. 

"I... don't know how to phrase it," Holly said slowly, trying to get her thoughts in order. "I know that _something_ is going on, but I don't know what that something is, or how to... well, deal with it."

"Right," said Dan.

"Not even deal with it," Holly continued, following her train of thought. "How to explain it. It's not like I can say that I've somehow developed an incapacitating fear of water, because... it's not water that I'm afraid of."

"It's not," Dan agreed. 

Holly sighed. "Well," she said. "One thing at a time."

"One thing at a time," Dan echoed.

Holly took her walking stick in hand, the briefcase tucked under one arm. "Shall we?"

Dan held his arm out to her, and Holly laughed, and rested her hand on his elbow.

He covered her hand with his, fingers warm even through her gloves, and she was comforted. 

 

* * *

Something was wrong. 

When Holly stepped out of her house, she knew that something was missing - something big and vital. But what _was_ it?

The city was the same - the river lapping at its banks, along the narrow path that separated the bank from her house. She frowned, looking at the muddy red water going by, and then she carefully looked away. As much as she disliked the river... if she threw a rock out of her front window, it would splash into the water.

Not that she'd ever done such a thing.

"Was it... was it always like that?" Dan was frowning over at the river, as they made their way around it, down the block. Another one of its branches was a blocks over, and Holly tried not to look at it. It was hot - the kind of oppressive heat that made the confines of her mask feel like a prison, the overheated air misting against her cheeks, sweat dripping down her neck, between her breasts, along her sides. 

"I... the river is there now," Holly said, which wasn't an answer, but would have to stand in for one. It was hard to think, and it took her a moment to figure out why. 

The air stank - no, more than stank, it _fugged_ \- of something rotten, something dying. It was the same sickly sweet, vaguely meaty scent that reminded her of autopsies on the long dead - cutting open putrid corpses that had drowned in the river, or some poor sap who was buried in the floorboards by an angry lover. The scent was enough to make her head spin, and she clutched at Dan's arm, and wished that she had put some fresh herbs into her mask. Did she have any?

Did it always smell like this? True, the city could get a bit... whiffy, when it got hot, but not like _this_. Holly had been in charnel houses that didn't reek of rotting blood and rancid meat the way walking down the street did. The mud caking the hem of her coat was reddish, and it clumped. It was the same reddish brown as the river, and _that_ didn't seem to be right, but she couldn't entirely explain why.

She was missing something - something important, something vital.

"It's bad today," said Dan. 

"Is it the river making that smell?" Holly's fingers dug into Dan's arm, and Dan covered her hand with his own, squeezing her fingers tightly. It was untoward, for them to be so openly affectionate in public, but... to Hell with it. She was light headed from the smell, from the visceral _wrongness_ of it. 

It was visceral, too - a crawling, slimy, maggoty disgust, so different from the neatness of the operating table. She’d seen bodies in various states of decomposition - she’d taken bodies apart clinically like puzzles. This felt… wrong, the kind of wrong that made her skin try to crawl off of her shoulders, away from the wrongness. Except the wrongness was everywhere, from the soft, spongy ground to the horrific smell permeating everything. She wanted to get away from it, except she didn’t know what she was trying to get away _from_ , or where she’d get away _to_.

Had the air ever smelled different? Had the river always moved sluggishly along the banks, clotted up with great balls of mud? Had the ground felt like it was about to give under each footfall, soggy like rotting meat? 

“I don’t know,” Dan said, and he squeezed her fingers. “Are you alright?”

Holly was impressed in spite of herself - he hadn't even known her that long, and somehow he was reading her body language, without seeing her face. Would he ever cease to surprise her?

"Something feels... wrong," Holly said slowly. "A kind of wrong that I can't put my finger on, except that it's there, and it's crawling through me like maggots."

Dan nodded. "I understand," he said quietly. "I can feel it too." 

"We need to go to the university," said Holly. "We need to... we need to figure this out, and I know the other Plague Doctors can help with that." She scanned the skyline, looking for the University. Ordinarily, she could have found it blindfolded and half dead, but the miasma roiling around the two of them was clouding her head. She couldn't see the familiar spires, but everything seemed to be faintly out of focus, like they were in the middle of a mirage. 

"Right," said Dan, although he still sounded troubled. He squeezed her hand, and they kept walking along the riverbank.

The city was eerily... vacant. There should have been more people bustling about, more noise. The occasional person would walk by, but for the most part, the streets were empty. Holly had walked through the city late at night (nobody bothered Plague Doctors, even female ones, because you didn't want to get on the wrong side of the only people would would heal you in times of trouble), and it hadn't had the echoing emptiness to it. 

"Where is everyone?" Holly tried to keep her tone light as they crossed away from one of the branches of the river, to the next one. The bridge creaked under their feet in an ominous way, but Holly tried to ignore it, tried not to let the anxiety curdling in her stomach come out of her mouth.

"Maybe it's a holiday that we both forgot about," Dan said, and his voice was almost toneless. He still had his hand over her hand, and he was squeezing it very tightly - when she glance down at his hand, she saw that his knuckles were turning white.

She squeezed his fingers. "Plague Doctors have their own holidays," she told him, which was true. They celebrated the holidays of the land - or at least, they _knew_ the holidays of the land - but this wasn't the time to think about that kind of thing - she dug her fingers into her palms, and she almost missed that she wasn't wearing her gloves. She wished that she could be anywhere but here.

She'd be safe when she got to the University. Even if they couldn't figure out what was going on, they'd at least be able to tell the source of this wrongness, right? Or they'd be able to figure out what it was that was causing it in the first place. Or at least be able to _tell_ that something was wrong, right?

She hated this.

"Holly?" Dan leaned over, and his voice was in her ear. 

Holly jumped, and she looked up at him through the glasses on her mask. "What?"

"Sorry," Dan said, apologetic, and the guilt slammed down on her almost immediately. 

"No, no," Holly said. "Sorry. I was off in my own mind." 

"Well," said Dan, and he put on a slightly querulous grin, "you've got so much of it, I can see why you might get lost in it!"

Holly snorted. "You flatterer, you," she said dryly. "So what were you asking me?"

"People are... staring at us," said Dan, and his eyes darted around.

Holly paused, taking stock of her surroundings. They were in a square now - there were a lot less people than usual, but they were still _there_ , and they were being stared at from stalls selling cheap used clothing or meat on sticks.

"You're with a Plague Doctor," she told Dan. "You haven't been out and about with me much, have you?"

"Well, no," said Dan, and he crowded closer to her, like a scared child, "but still."

"People stare at Plague Doctors," Holly said, with confidence, because it was true.

"I know," Dan said thickly, "but... but I don't think they usually stare like _this_." His eyes were darting around, as they went over yet another bridge, over another branch of the river.

"Like what?" Holly was used to ignoring stares by now. People stared at Plague Doctors, because they were afraid of them, because Plague Doctors were strange.

"Like they've never seen someone like you," said Dan.

Holly frowned, looking around them. 

There _were_ more suspicious looks than usual, that was true. She was used to vaguely uneasy stares, maybe a little bit of out and out dislike (there was always some idiot spouting off about how Plague Doctors _caused_ diseases, which was idiotic, but what could you do - idiots were going to be idiots regardless), but this was full on bafflement. Small children, which usually hid from her, buried their faces in their mother's skirts or hid behind corners as she and Dan made their way towards the street. 

Dan leaned forward, so that he was speaking right into her ear. "Something strange is going on," he said, very quietly.

"I can tell," Holly said, her voice equally quiet. 

There was a panic growing in the back of her mind, fanned by the horrible smell permeating... well, everything. They were making their way towards the University - she recognized the garden they were walking past, she recognized the house with the green shutters, she recognized the apothecary. But she didn't see the familiar shape of the University looming over them. There was a great empty space ahead of them, like a tooth that had been knocked out of someone's mouth. 

"Where's the University?" Holly stopped right there, in the middle of the sidewalk. 

If things were normal - if they were _right_ \- then they would have been proceeding towards the great spires, the University taking up its huge space. It was a great, slightly unsettling bulk that was just _there_ , like a mountain, or the moon. It had always been there, and it would always be there.

Except it wasn't there. 

There was no University, there was no nothing. Just a particularly thick tributary of the river, going through the empty space where the University should have been. It was like she was missing some piece of herself - it was just... a great, thundering river, moving at speed. Well, as much speed as it could, as full of mud and dirt as the rest of the river was, and it was just a mass of red-brown goop, clotted up with debris. She didn't want to look at it, but... _where was the University_?

"It has to be here," Holly said, and her voice was hollow. "It has to be."

"Oi," said a man from behind them, and Holly whirled around, looking at the man through the smoked glass covering the eyes of her mask, and he looked down at her, frowning. "What's with the mask?"

"What?" Holly wasn't sure what she'd been expecting him to say, but that... very much wasn't it. 

"The mask," he repeated. "You going to a fancy dress party or something like that?"

"I'm a Plague Doctor," Holly said, drawing herself up to her full height. 

"A what? We ain't had a Plague in decades." The man frowned.

"A Plague Doctor," said Holly. "Of the Order of the Plague Doctors."

"I've never heard of 'em," said the man, although he didn't look... actively hostile. 

"We're... what?" Holly turned to Dan, and she was frowning, as her mind raced. "What happened to the... the big building that was over there?" Holly pointed to the big, vacant spot where the University was. 

"Never been a building there," said the man. "Who would build over the river?" 

"There was a building," Holly insisted. "A big building. It had a wall around it, there were spires. It was - _is_ \- a university." 

"We don't have a university in the city," said the man. "Where would it even fit?" 

"Over there," Holly said, indicating the big empty space.

"Can't put it there," said the man. "There's a river there."

"The river... wasn't always there," Holly said, although her mind was fighting against it. That couldn't be true. It was a river. A river was there. That's what rivers did -they didn't just show up out of the blue.

The man raised an eyebrow. "Alright," he said, and he cleared his throat. "Well, I'd be best be going. Thanks for your time, folks." He walked away, and he only glanced over his shoulder twice, clearly checking to see if they were going to follow him. 

"How can someone not know about the Plague Doctors?" Holly turned to Dan, and he looked at her, his expression apologetic. "Maybe we should take a closer look."

"At what?" Dan frowned, looking confused.

"You know," said Holly, and she cleared her throat, discomfort filling her like water in a glass. "The river. Maybe we should take a closer look. Maybe the University... fell in?" Even as she said it, she knew that couldn't be true. How could it be true? A river didn't just... _appear_ overnight. That wasn't how any of this worked. 

“I don’t think… I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Dan. “We should stay away from the river.” He was still holding her hand, and he squeezed it now, tightly. 

“The University is my home,” Holly said. “Brian’s there, all of my friends are there.” She gave a dry sob, and was faintly surprised at herself. She hadn’t thought herself that sentimental. But… it was where she had grown up. She could have lived with it being destroyed - it would have hurt, she would have grieved, but… this wasn’t the same. 

It wasn’t gone. 

It was as if it had never been there. 

Some part of her mind was already trying to tell her that she was imagining things - there hadn’t been a building there, obviously, because the river was there. 

Rivers didn't just show up. Rivers were carved into the landscape, over time. She had needed to study rivers, when she was studying anatomy - rivers were to the land like veins were to the body, and the Plague Doctors decreed that one was related to the other. Bodies were like the land, and the land was like bodies. All things were connected, in one way or another - one needed only look at the doctrine of signatures to see it. 

An idea sprouted in her head - the very beginnings of a delicate soap bubble - and she gave a metaphorical twist, trying to get a better look of it. It skittered away, but there was still a trace of it, like a piece of wool stuck to a brier. She sighed, and she resisted the urge to rub her face. The first time she'd had that urge in a very long time - since she'd first started wearing the mask, in fact. 

"So maybe people don't... remember the University," Dan said quietly. "The way they forgot about me." He sounded pained, and she wasn't sure which of them was more pained - him, for being forgotten, or her, for losing her home. 

"How can they just... _forget_ the University? It's at the heart of the city!" And the idea was pinged again. The fainted bit of it, poking her in the side of the brain, and the spongy ground under them heaved. 

Holly clutched at Dan, nearly falling over, still staring at the empty place where the University had been. If the University had been the heart of her city, that meant that both of their hearts had been there, and now it was missing too, wasn't it? A little piece of themselves. If not a little piece of their whole selves, which... how to deal with this? How to survive this at all?

Holly put a hand over her heart, and she was faintly surprised to find that it was still beating under her palm, a hammering, pounding that felt like it would break out of her chest. She was half afraid it would stop, from the shock of it. Everything was _gone_ \- the walls, the buildings, the people. The very trees, the various outbuildings, the animals, the... everything. How could everything just disappear? It wasn't as if a river had dried up, or a hole had opened up. There weren't any foundations, there wasn't a road, there was just a river. A river, filled with thick, red-brown water that oozed through it. 

"There's something wrong with the river," Holly said slowly. "There's... there's something wrong with the river." She turned around, very slowly, and a gust of wind blew more of the putrid scent into her face. She wanted to be sick - she should have stuffed some herbs into the beak of her mask, should have... she should have done _something_ , and she didn't know what. 

"It's the river," Dan said. "It's always been there." Then he frowned, and his thoughts moved across his face like a storm in the sky. "Except it's not, because... because I remember the University."

"Tell me one thing you remember about it," Holly said sharply.

"Hm?"

"One thing you remember about the University," Holly said. "I think... I think that you and I may be the only people who remember it now. I think we need to remember it, so it doesn't disappear. From our minds, I mean." She was babbling, and she was _aware_ she was babbling, but she didn't know how to stop. 

They were walking away from the big empty place now, and they were holding hands. None of the scant people they were passing gave them dirty looks for that, at least. They were all still looking at Holly askance, and she realized she hadn't seen even a hint of another Plague Doctor. It wasn't that she was used to seeing many of them out and about, but usually, while walking through the city, there was at least one other masked face gazing back at her. It wasn't always someone she knew, but they were _Plague Doctors_ around. 

A thought popped into her head, and she glanced at Dan, turning her head more fully so that he could see that she was looking at him. "Have you... have you checked in on other People of the Book?" She hopefully didn't sound too... awkward as she said it, but _was_ there a polite way to say "has your entire culture just disappeared the way mine has?" without coming off as faintly awkward. 

"I think we're okay," Dan said slowly, as they made their way back towards Holly's house. We're not all in one centralized place like you guys are. Were. Are?" He frowned, and his eyebrows knit together. "I feel like the tenses in this case are complicated."

"I'm surprised you're so concerned about the tenses," said Holly. 

"Frankly, it's a lot easier for me to fuss about the grammar than to contemplate the fact that I may be the last person of my culture," Dan said in a tone that was a lot more glib than it had a right to be. His eyes were very dark, and he looked like he was going to have some kind of feeling. Not one that she had a name for. 

"Right," said Holly, then, more quietly, "what is the world going to do without Plague Doctors?" The anxiety was boiling off of her voice - it was boiling off of her very _skin_. 

"You can't be the only one," Dan said, with more confidence than Holly could wrap her head around. "Maybe... maybe the other Plague Doctors are also inoculated you all to... all of this." 

"All of this," Holly echoed. "What _is_ all of this?" They were walking back towards her house, and the river seemed to be following them, except they weren't. They weren't being followed. It was a river, and rivers didn't follow people, and even if they did, why would a river want to follow them?

"I don't know," said Dan. "Maybe we need to... maybe we need to go elsewhere."

"Elsewhere," said Holly. "What kind of elsewhere?" She was just... repeating everything she was hearing, but she didn't know what _else_ to say. It was like all of her own thoughts were just... elsewhere. Tucked away in a little box in the back of her head, wrapped up in chains and locked with a dozen padlocks. She'd seen a man escape from a box like that, when she was very small. The Plague Doctors believed in a well rounded education, and somehow escapology had something to do with healing people. 

Holly never understood it, but then again, what did the study of motion have to do with the study of birds? 

Brian wasn't there anymore. Full on wasn't there. Where would she find someone else who knew music and medicine in equal measure? Where else would she find someone who made horrible, disgusting jokes? Something in her chest cracked like a bone, and she wasn't sure it would ever heal. Did she _want_ it to heal, or would that be some kind of betrayal? She wanted to go hide under her bed and never come back, but what could she do? 

"I don't know that yet," said Dan. "One thing at a time." 

"Well," said Holly. "Well."

"Well?" They were walking over a bridge now, and it was old - the masonry was crumbling, the mortar between the stones barely holding it together, the rocks very clearly worn through. Some part of Holly thought that there should have been moss - old masonry usually had moss, and this masonry looked as old as the University.

Although why didn't she remember it? She'd walked this way loads of time - she had a memory sitting in her mind like a bad meal, taking up space that should have been occupied by... something else. She stood in the middle of the bridge, staring at the river and scowling behind her mask. 

"This is fucked up," she said. 

Dan looked at her, looking faintly shocked. "Wow," she said. "You don't curse much."

"I curse when I need to," Holly said, and she sighed, and wished she could rub her temples. Her head hurt. 

"I guess this is as good a time as any to swear," Dan said. His voice had a slightly manic edge to it, but he was very clearly holding on to his sanity by the skin of his teeth.

Holly leaned against the railing of the bridge, and the mortar made an ominous sound - a sort of dry, papery sort of creak. She looked down at it, frowning, and then the masonry was... giving way.

She saw it happening - she saw the masonry collapse, as if from very far away, and then she saw herself falling, and she saw Dan grabbing for her wrist, and then she saw herself falling, in slow motion, into the water.

The water, which was thick enough that it was like falling through mud, but still viscous, closed around her. It was _warm_ , like a glass that's been left out on a windowsill in the sun for too long. She thrashed around in it, trying to keep her head above water, but somehow the muddy water was going into her mask, and now it was pressing against her face, and she couldn't breathe, she was choking, she was under the water and she was choking, she was going to die here, in this horrific, terrifying river that wasn't really a river.

It was like being in the veins of some kind of colossal beast, but that couldn't be right, because that just... wasn't a thing. It didn't exist. There may have been giant beasts, but how would their veins be a thing that she could fall in? Could you drown in blood? People drowned in their own blood, with a bad enough gut wound, but this was something else - she didn’t know what this was, but it wasn’t her own blood. Was it even blood? Her head was pounding, and her mouth tasted like… tasted...

A big hand was grabbing her by the shoulders, and then she was being pulled upright, awkwardly, and she was still choking at the muddy water pressing against her face. It was like her own personalized terror, and she couldn’t _breathe_. There was more of that horrible water in her mouth, in her nose, and it smelled like metal, it tasted like rust. It was rotten, the kind of rotten you found in a slaughterhouse, and she couldn’t breathe. 

The mask was yanked off of her. Full on pulled. One second there was water pressed against her face, forced by the mask, and then the mask was gone, the back of her head smarting where the buckles had dug in, and Dan was staring at her bare face. 

Well, bare in the technical sense. She was coated in the muddy water, and it clung to her like… like something else that clung. All of the comparisons that were racing through her head - _like blood, like shit, like snot_ \- were all too visceral. Too real. Too bodily. She was throwing up, into her lap, onto his feet, and it was coming out of her mouth, her nose. She was crying so hard that she couldn’t breathe, as vomit trickled out of her nose, out of her mouth. She kept coughing, more of the disgusting water coming out of her, mixing up with bile, and there was so much of it, so much disgustingness, her whole _body_ was oozing it. 

Dan made soothing noises, wiping her face off with what was probably a handkerchief, and then she realized her face was in the open air - her face was _outdoors_ , for the first time since she was a teenager. She coughed again, panic seizing her by the throat, and she was drowning in it the same way she had drowned in the water, only this time Dan couldn't yank her out of it, and she was gasping and choking, trying to catch her breath, trying to calm down, trying to -

The darkness descended on her, like someone dropping a blanket over her head, and she swooned like the heroine in a romance novel. Some part of her mind was rolling her eyes - _really, Holly?_ \- but the rest of her was caught up in the blind, mind melting panic. The last thing she was aware of was Dan's arms around her, keeping her from falling into the pile of her own vomit.

 

* * *

 

When Holly woke up again, her face was covered with cloth. She realized, after a panicky few seconds, that Dan must have pulled his jacket over her face - it was the same thick fabric. She couldn't entirely breathe through it comfortably, but the important part was that _nobody could see her face_ and that was all that mattered, right? She was lying on what felt like the ground - there was a cobblestone digging into her lower back, and she could feel the sun beating down on her face, even through the fabric. The smell of the... well, everything was blunted by the fabric, and she was at the very least grateful for that. 

She found, to her surprise, that she was shaking. Why was she shaking so hard?

"Holly?" Dan's voice was very quiet.

"Dan?" She turned her covered face towards the sound of his voice, trying to orient herself. 

"You're awake," Dan said, and the relief in his voice was palpable. "I'm sorry... I'm sorry I took your mask off."

"It's alright," Holly said, and she almost believed herself. "I was going to drown. If you have to choose between dying and not wearing the mask, you take the mask off." 

Taking the mask off usually meant dying anyway, although Dan didn't need to know that.

"What other situations would you need to take the mask off or die?" Dan was sitting next to her - there was a skinny thigh pressed against her own, and she took comfort from the closeness of it. He was warm, even through all of her layers. All of her _stifling_ layers, which she very much wanted to get out of. They were all full of stinking, sticky mud, which was already starting to dry on her. 

"About three hundred years ago," Holly said, "things got a lot more difficult for us." This wasn't a thing she was supposed to tell anyone who wasn't a Plague Doctor, but... well. 

Well. 

"How could it get more difficult? You guys heal people! For free, even!" Dan sounded surprised.

"A lot of people are afraid of us," Holly said, "because we wear masks, we don't get married with the general populace, we don't do... well, a lot of things. For a while, people didn't think we were human. We didn't dissuade the idea, because... well, it made life easier, if they saw us as some otherworldly being, you know?" She heaved a sigh, and then she began to cough, spitting out more of the vile mud. 

"Right," Dan said, and he gave her another whack on the back. She spat out another disgusting mouthful. 

"But," said Holly, "one of us... was really stupid." She was scowling behind the jacket over her face. "She ended up making a promise to a rich man, that she'd be able to save the rich man's son. Of course, you never make a promise like that - we can't ever _promise_ that we'll save someone, because something can always go wrong. But she made the promise, and then the boy died, and the rich man was so angry that he had her killed, right there in his country estate. And then he took her mask off and found out that she was a human being, and he was even angrier, because there was further proof that we were all nothing but charlatans and liars." 

"Oh," Dan said, very quietly.

"So... at first, a lot of us were being stopped in the street, and they demanded that we take our masks off," said Holly. She’d learned about this in a class, and if she closed her eyes she could see the room all around her - the great slate board behind him, the rows upon rows of desks on a rise, the dry, papery voice speaking about the great loss of life as pens scritched away at paper. 

“And you guys didn’t like that?” Dan’s voice was gentle, and his hand was on the back of her neck. He had very big hands, and he was squeezing, gently. It was relaxing, although she wasn’t sure why. She let herself be soothed, regardless. 

“Our masks aren’t just to hide our faces,” Holly said. “They protect us from the miasma, from bad humors.”

“Right,” said Dan. 

“And… they’re our masks,” Holly said, but she didn’t think she was conveying it… properly. It was hard to explain it to someone who hadn’t grown up with the knowledge of the masks, and what they meant. A person’s mask was a bit like their face, only… not. It was a piece of themselves. It was like asking someone to cut off their foot, or take out their eyes. It wasn’t painful, but it was such an essential part of _themselves_ that it was nearly impossible to separate it. 

Dan made some kind of soothing noise, and he patted her on the shoulder. “I don’t really understand,” he told her, and she could admire his frankness, “but I’m sorry it upset you.” 

“So it was decreed,” Holly continued, “that we could remove our masks if it was a life or death situation.” 

"Right," said Dan. 

"But... well, it's a life or death situation," Holly said, and she _knew_ that she was describing it wrong, but didn't know how to describe it any other way. "This doesn't feel like a life or death situation."

"Holly," Dan said gently, and his hand was on her knee. It would have been inappropriate, if the street hadn't been so empty, "you were going to drown. It was, quite literally, a life or death situation."

Holly sighed, and she clasped her hands together, squeezing her fingers. "Well," she said softly, "when you put it like _that_."

"I do," said Dan. 

"I want to go home," said Holly. Her voice was very quiet in her own ears, muffled by the cloth. 

Whatever Dan was going to say was interrupted by the sound of screaming. It was a good scream, too - the kind of scream that Holly would associate with a certain class of melodrama. She was standing up before she had a chance to think, gripping her walking stick in one fist... and then she nearly passed out, as Dan's coat fell from her face, and she felt the sun on the skin of her cheeks for the first time in a decade and a half. She nearly passed out from the shock of it, and she would have hated herself for it, but there was another scream, and... what was she going to _do_?

"Give me your handkerchief," Holly said.

"What?" Dan looked at her, confused. Then light dawned. "Oh. Right. Of course." He fumbled in his pocket, then handed it over to her. 

Holly tied it around her face, and tried to ignore the greedy way his eyes drank in her face. Then it became too hard to ignore, and she cleared her throat, looking over at him. "What?"

"Your eyes," he said. "I hadn't imagined your eyes would be green." 

"Oh," Holly said, looking down at her hands.

"I'd say that I like them," Dan added, "but I feel like it comes off a bit odd when I put it like that. Since they're your eyes, and it's not like they're there in the first place for me to enjoy. Although I do enjoy them. Um." Dan trailed off, and he looked embarrassed.

"You're cute," Holly said, charmed in spite of herself. "I'm glad you like my eyes."

There was _another_ scream, and whatever sweetness had been building between the two of them was cut like a knife, and then Holly was making her way towards it at a dead run. She didn't run that often - it wasn't befitting a Plague Doctor, and also seeing a Plague Doctor running tended to scare the shit out of everyone. But nobody knew that she was a Plague Doctor, because nobody knew what a Plague Doctor was in the first place. What was she supposed to do with this? 

 

* * *

 

There was a man standing in front of a house, and he was screaming. He was holding... something, and there was something dark and drippy soaking into the front of his shirt. Holly stopped running, and she looked, and took it in. He was screaming words, and she didn't entirely understand all of them - he wasn't speaking English, which took her a few seconds to parse, but it sounded... oh, no. 

Sometimes, Holly's patients didn't speak English. She could deal with that - someone usually brought a relative along, or she could get _some_ semblance of communication across, although it took practice. But this man was just screaming, and the smell that was coming off of him in waves... she knew that smell. 

"Holly," Dan said, and he came to a stop behind her like a whole line of fold up chairs, "what's going - oh." 

The man was holding a blanket, and it was smeared with... stuff. Black goo, bile, various other bodily fluids that she would probably recognize if she looked a little closer, but didn't want to. She took a step closer to the man, and held both hands up. "I'm here to help you," she said, and then she wondered - _what can I do?_

She didn't have her clinic, she didn't have the other Plague Doctors to back her up, she didn't really have anything. Her stomach twisted in knots. But she could at least do an examination, right?

There was a little girl standing outside of reach, shadowed by the darkness of the house, and she stared at the both of them with wide, dark eyes. 

"Hello," Dan said, and he was getting down on his haunches, looking over at the little girl. "Are you alright?"

"That's my Papa," said the little girl. "That's my Papa, and that's my little sister." 

"Where's your little sister, sweetheart?" Dan's voice was surprisingly gentle, considering the fact that there was a grown man screaming... something.

Holly's heart was sinking down into her stomach, into her bowels. 

"He's holding her," said the little girl. She had an accent of some kind, although Holly couldn't place it. 

Holly looked, and saw that the man was holding a blanket full of slime and sludge, and then... a hand dangled out. It was a baby's hand, or it had been a baby's hand, but it had been a baby's hand a long time ago. There was greying flesh, stretched tight with the putrescent gases that came after death. The flesh looked like it was about to burst, like a bag full of too much water. The man was still holding the baby, and he was still wailing.

“Is that your daughter?” Holly spoke slowly, carefully. 

"My Papa says that she was sleeping," said the little girl. "She was sleeping, and now she's like this." The girl frowned, and Dan made a sympathetic noise. "Why is she like this?" 

The baby was more than dead - it had been dead for a long time, judging by the... liquid that was dripping down and off of her, soaking into her father's shirt. She'd seen that same kind of decay on the corpse of an infant that had been smothered and dropped into a trash heap, left to rot for three weeks in the high summer. 

"I am a member of the Order of the Plague Doctors," Holly said, and it wasn't _her_ voice - it was the voice of herself as a Plague Doctor. Holly the human being was screaming inside, but Holly the Plague Doctor had to separate this man from the contaminant before it infected everything else. 

"Plague Doctors?" The little girl frowned at Holly over Dan's shoulder. "Is there a plague?"

"There isn't a plague," Holly said. How in the name of all the elders was she supposed to explain _that_ , to someone who didn't know about the Order?

"We're a special kind of doctor," said Dan, and Holly would have been offended by the "we" considering he'd never taken any vows, but... well. He was handling the little girl, and it was Holly's job to deal with the dead baby. She wasn't sure what to do about it, honestly - how to deal with a body that badly decayed? But she stood up, and she desperately missed her mask as she did so.

Her nose wrinkled, and the strange man was looking _right into her eyes_ , which... well, to put it lightly, she didn't like it. But she kept pointing at herself and saying "doctor," and eventually he was... handing the body over to her. He was handing her the body, and it was a mess of slime, things loosely held together in the blanket, but she kept holding on to it, the slime beginning to sink into her own dress. She was going to need to burn it, when she finished this. 

The man rattled off something, and the girl walked over to Holly, staring up at her with a grim expression. "What's are you going to do?"

"I'm going to dispose of the body," said Holly, because what else was she going to do? She remembered how they did it, when the University was still around. She'd been on corpse duty, when she was still a teenager. Although thinking about the University in the past tense made her chest hurt. She needed to not think about that. 

"Are you going to burn it?" 

"Is that how you... how your family deals with dead bodies?" At the University, there were people who knew how to talk to people about death, and students to haul the corpses away. It wasn't the first time Holly had carried a dead child - or even a child that was _this_ dead. So why was the inside of her head just one prolonged scream. 

"We burn them," the girl repeated.

"Please tell your father to come to our house tomorrow," said Dan, smoothly taking over for Holly, who seemed to be losing her mind. How was it that he was able to keep a cool head, when _she_ was the one with all the experience? She listened, numb, as Dan rattled off the address, and then the both of them were walking back towards her home. She held the rotten, stinking body of the child to her child, like the parody of motherhood, and the terror in her mind beat like the waves on the shore.

"Holly?" Dan's voice was quiet, as they passed over another bridge. She tried not to think of what it had felt like, to be sinking into that water. What it had _tasted_ like. 

"I didn't ask for her name," Holly said quietly. The handkerchief over her nose didn't do much to block out the smell, and she longed for the familiarity of the leather of her mask. Everything was too bright, without the smoked glass of her mask. She missed her mask like a limb, but it had been so full of stinking, muddy water, and the idea of anything closing around her face right now made her feel like she couldn't breathe. 

"What?" Dan was close enough that he could hear her, but he was wrinkling his nose from the scent. The scent was rank and seemed to beat through her whole body, like a bad headache. 

"Her name," Holly said, nodding at the bundle in her arms. "I didn't get her name."

"You can ask tomorrow," Dan said. "When you give them the ashes." He paused. "I've, uh... I've never seen a body burned." 

"No?"

"It's not a thing we do. People of the Book, I mean. It's not a thing we do." 

“What do you do with your bodies?”

“Well, we keep them for as long as possible,” Dan said, and he laughed, some of the tension bleeding out of him. “But… we also… we bury them.”

“It’s more sanitary to burn them,” said Holly. “Most things don’t survive fire.”

“We don’t really think about things being sanitary,” Dad admitted. “As important as it is to be sanitary.”

“Right,” said Holly.

They walked in silence - their feet seemed to be very loud as they clomped away on the cobblestones. “I’m sure you’ve seen things like this before,” Dan began.

“Before Angela, it was never like this,” Holly cut in, and she tried to keep the horror out of her voice. “I’ve… I’ve seen this, but never like this.”

“Right,” said Dan. “I’ve never really seen a dead body like … well, in general. Before a few days ago.”

It had only been a few days, hadn’t it? That was a strange thing to think about. 

"Not a dead body like... that," Dan continued. He glanced over at Holly, then at the wet, awkward bundle in her arms. "Do you want me to... to carry that?" 

"No," Holly said. They were walking along one of the broad banks of the river now, and some perverse part of her wanted to drop the body into the river. _That mud tasted almost like blood_ , she thought, but blood can't be like thick. Her thoughts were moving a little slower than usual, as if they were happening a long way off, to someone else. 

"Are you sure? Because -"

"I'm going to have to burn my clothes," Holly said flatly. "I don't want to have to burn yours, too."

"Oh," Dan said quietly. "Sorry."

"Why are you sorry?" Holly was... what was she? She was angry, but why was she angry? Was she angry at Dan? She liked to think that she usually had a good handle on her emotions, but she wanted to scream, or to hit something, or maybe to just jump in the river again and drown in that horrible mud. Her insides still felt faintly polluted from where she'd swallowed it, and her whole body was on edge.

"Because I feel like I started all of this," Dan said quietly. "I dragged you into it. If I hadn't come to you for help, you wouldn't have been mixed up in it in the first place." 

Holly shrugged, and then she regretted it, because that sent a cascade of slime down the front of her dress - it was soaking into the fabric. It was probably going to bleed through to her corset, and she was going to need to burn all of her clothes. She hadn't been particularly attached to this dress, but, well... she didn't have that many. It wasn't like she could go out and buy another one.

"So how are you going to dispose of the body?" They were walking through a cluster of buildings, all of them leaning higgeldy-piggeldy, as if they were drunk. It was a bit like walking through a tunnel, and Holly couldn't escape the sensation that the buildings were listening to them, the windows like great, open ears.

"Give it to the - oh." The missing University hit her all over again, like a blow to the gut, and the only thing that kept her from gasping was the fact that she'd get a faceful of the death vapors coming from the body in her arms. "I used to give bodies to the University," she told Dan quietly. "We have - had a - crematorium." 

"Right," said Dan. 

"I think that this body is too wet to do that to," said Holly. "To burn, I mean."

The body seemed to be... dissolving - the blanket was becoming more sodden, less solid. By the time they got back to Holly's house, the blanket was just a mass of black slime, with a few powdery bones that disintegrated when Holly shifted it in her arms. 

"I don't think we should bring this into the house," said Dan. "We can... you have a gate in your back garden, go through that." 

"I haven't weeded that spot in more than two years," said Holly. "It's going to take a lot of work to actually get the gate open. It may be rusted shut."

"I don't care," Dan said, and he was frowning now, hard. "I don't want that to be in a place that I sleep. And it can't be good for the birds."

"Right," said Holly. It made sense. She felt vaguely guilty, that she hadn't thought of the birds in the first place. Then again, she was still somewhat distant from all of it, and she wasn't sure what she was doing. 

"Okay," said Dan, when they arrived at her house, standing by itself by the river. "You go around the back, I'll go around the front."

"Can you get the key out of my pocket?" Her walking stick was tucked under her arm, and the blanket she was holding seemed to be full of something with the consistency of a particularly old custard.

_I'm never going to eat custard again_ , flashed through her head. 

"Of course," said Dan, and then his hand was indeed in the pocket of her dress, and she would have been embarrassed, except she didn't have it in her anymore. She was tired, and the horror of the day was starting to wash over her. 

She couldn’t start shaking. If she started shaking, she’d end up spilling more of the contents of the blanket all over herself, and then she might throw up, and nobody wanted to deal with that. It was kind of impressive - she’d never managed to be this disgusted before, and she hadn’t thought that it was possible. The ground was soft and soggy under her boots, as she edged around the river bank, towards her back garden. 

There weren’t any houses around, for quite a ways, and that felt… wrong, but she couldn’t explain it, except that she was too tired to think about it. That was what she was feeling, wasn’t it? Exhaustion. Exhaustion about all of this, exhaustion and unsureness as to how to fix it. Was it even her job to fix it? Some part of her wanted to just turn her face to the heavens and yell at the sky - _none of this is mine to deal with, I’m just a doctor_. But then again, what was a doctor, if not someone who fixed things?

Holly didn’t want to fix this. She wanted it to be fixed by someone else, who knew what they were doing. Someone who knew how to deal with the soul crushing horror that seemed to be eating her very mind alive. 

She stood by the gate at her back garden, and she held the blanket full of sludge and grime, trying not to think about it. She was close enough to the river that the smell of it seemed to have gotten stronger, and it was washing over her in waves, to combat the fumes that were rising off of the disintegrating body in her arms. She missed the security of her mask. 

The walls around her garden were big enough that she couldn't see in - she heard Dan coming in, and then there was the scream of disused hinges, and she was looking Dan in the face.

"You've got a fire pit back here," he said. "Can I just... I mean, do you want me to...?"

She stepped in, and some part of her almost flinched, to be bringing something so... wrong into her own space. But what else was she going to do? 

"I'm going to burn everything that I'm wearing," Holly said, in what she hoped was a calm tone of voice. "We're going to burn the blanket as well. My fire pit isn't hot enough to burn a body, but..." There wasn't a body, was there? She dropped the blanket, and the mass of black... goo oozed out, soaking into the pink blanket, and then Holly's fingers were trembling as she worked at the laces of her shirt, pulling it open, then dumping it into the fire pit. Next came her skirt, her corset, her chemise, her drawers... she methodically removed all of her clothes, exposing her skin to the open air, and that was terrifying, but she didn't care.

Risking contamination from the ill vapors in the air - risking the _Plague_ \- was better than having the mud and the dead body up against her. Her skin was crawling, and she needed... she needed to have it all against her. The mud had seeped into her clothes, and there was a disgusting slurry of body and river mud and who even knew what else, just coating her. 

"I saw a tin bath in your room," Dan said. He was fingering his own jacket, as if he wasn't sure if he should offer it to her or not. To his eternal credit, he wasn't looking her up and down, despite the fact that she was very naked, her nipples getting hard, her skin breaking out in goosebumps. "How about... how about you start filling that with water, while I get the fire started?"

"I should get the fire started," said Holly. "It's my job."

"Holly," Dan said, and his voice was very gentle, "you're naked. It's not safe to build up a fire when you're naked."

"I need to," Holly said, and she realized with some surprise that there were tears dripping down her face, soaking into Dan's handkerchief. She pulled the handkerchief off of her face as well, not even thinking, just dropping it into the pit, and the enormity of what she had just done struck her. 

_Should I cover my face? Should I just leave it bare? I know what my professors would say, if they saw me like this, but I wouldn't be in this mess if they were here in the first place_. She kept her hands at her sides, still standing naked in her backyard, and Dan stared at her, his eyes wide.

"You've got a smaller nose than I thought you'd have," Dan said finally.

"What?" Whatever Holly had been expecting, it hadn't been that.

"Your nose," Dan said. "I had thought you'd have a smaller nose. Because... you know, the Plague Doctor mask, you've got a beak." 

"The beak isn't my nose," Holly said. "The beak is for putting things in. Like... herbs. To keep smells out." She wished she had something to keep the smell out - the scent of soggy, rotten decay seemed to permeate the whole space, practically choking her. 

"Right," said Dan. "But... still."

"Still?" 

"I'm glad you let me see your face," Dan said in a rush, then; "not glad that you had to take your mask off, I understand why you had to take your mask off and that would fuck me up too, but I'm glad that you trusted me enough that you were willing to... willing to take the risk of me seeing your face."

"You're seeing me standing naked in front of you, and all you care about is my face?" Holly's voice was dry, although her eyes were wet. She looked down at her boots, which were resting next to the edge of the fire pit, and she tried to keep herself into some kind of semblance of calm. 

“Your face is very… I mean, your face is your face,” Dan said, although even he seemed aware that he wasn’t making a lot of sense. “You’re… well, I mean, your breasts are lovely, your legs are wonderful, your quim could be sung about by angels -”

“Angels,” Holly interrupted. She looked skeptical. 

“You know what I mean,” Dan said, making a dismissive hand gesture.

Some part of this felt disrespectful - there was a dead child… or at least, what remained of a dead child - in the fire pit, as well as Holly’s clothes. But they were having this conversation, as Holly stood there completely naked. She probably should have worried about other people seeing her naked like this, but, well… it wasn’t like anyone lived around her, was there?

No, that didn’t feel right. She had the memory of neighbors. Neighbors who lived close enough that she heard them moving around in their own houses. But that couldn’t be right, because hers was the only house along this particular stretch of riverbank. 

She shook her head, and she rubbed her eyes, trying to get her thoughts in order. She was still crying, and she couldn't seem to make that stop. She was somewhat surprised to find Dan taking her into his arms, which he probably shouldn't have done - he was going to smeared in the same disgusting mixture that she was. She couldn't stop herself from clinging to him, though. She was crying ugly, the kind of wail usually associated with an infant, and she would have been embarrassed by it, but her mind was nothing but horror, and it poured out of her like bile.

Was she crying for the dead child? For the loss of the University? For the loss of the city? She didn't know. She didn't know what was happening, except that everything was _wrong_ \- it smelled wrong, it tasted wrong. The air itself seemed to be crawling across her skin like centipedes, and she tried not to shudder. 

"I know," Dan said, and he was rubbing her back, getting more mess all over himself. "I know. I'm here. I'm sorry, but I'm here."

She was still crying, and he rocked her, and crooned into her hair. That couldn't have been nice, as disgusting as her hair was presently, caked with the vile mud. Her eyes were running, her nose was running, and it was all soaking into his shirt. But even the greatest reservoir of tears dries out, and eventually she was pulling away, wiping her face and trying to catch her breath.

"I'm sorry," Dan said, and he sounded genuinely remorseful. "I'm sorry you're going through all of this."

Holly laughed wetly, and it was... well, it was more than a little disgusting, but she felt a little bit lighter. Still... there was just so _much_ to absorb, and she was already saturated with emotion. "You're not the one causing all of this," she told him, and she wiped her nose, sniffing loudly. Her runny nose was sticky and wet against the back of her hand, but at least the smell around her was much more muted. 

"I know, but... still." Dan kept looking like a kicked puppy.

"Still?" Holly gave him a Look, which she could still do, even when he could see her actual face. That was good, at least. 

Dan sighed, and he kissed her forehead. "I'll start the fire, you can go take a bath," he said. "Alright?"

Holly sighed. "Alright," she said, then paused. "Do you mind, um..." How to ask for this delicately?

"Do I mind?" Dan looked at her expectantly.

"Do you mind helping me fill the tub?" It wasn't that she wasn't strong - she filled her own bath with her own well water more times than she could count! She just... very much didn't want to do it naked. 

"I've got a better idea," said Dan, his expression thoughtful. "How about I rinse you down out here, then you can set up the bath?"

"That sounds like a good plan," said Holly, and some small part of her fell in love with him. 

She'd deal with that later.

 

* * * 

 

The water was cold, but it didn't have the same tint of redness that the river water had - it was just cold, slightly mineral tasting water. She let it sluice over her, let it rinse away the blood and the remains of the dead baby. The coldness was a shock to the system, but it felt clean, almost safe. She was going to soak in her tin bath in front of the the fire, let the water get as hot as she could take it, and then... well, she wasn't sure what she was going to do after that.

Dan's fingers were very delicate as they carded through her hair, getting out clumps of mud and chunks of who knew what else, and she just... let him. She let him run his fingers through it, and let him use his hands to get the bigger bits of mud off. He was scrubbing with another handkerchief (how many handkerchiefs had she bought him?) and then he was dumping more water on her.

"You won't have to sit in all that mud," he told her, his tone earnest. "You'll be able to just soak."

"We can give the father the ashes of my clothes and the blanket," said Holly, going to practical matters, as always. "Enough of the body was... incorporated into the cloth."

"Right," said Dan. His fingers went to her short hair, beginning to ruffle it now, getting more of the mess out of her hair. "Do you have something to put the ashes in?"

"I'll find something," Holly said, and she shivered - a gust of wind blew in off of the river, and it stank of rot and spoiled meat. It was cold, and it left the inside of her nose feeling greasy, polluted. "I think I'm ready."

"You go sit in the bath," said Dan, "and I'll get the water ready." Then he paused. "Are you alright with me, um... with me taking off some of my clothes?"

"I've seen you naked before, Dan," said Holly, puzzled. "Why would I be bothered?" 

“There are different types of naked,” Dan said earnestly, “and I know that some people are alright with naked in one context, but not in another.”

“Oh,” said Holly, and then she shrugged. “I think that I’m a bit too numb with shock to be bothered by nudity,” she told him, which was probably more blunt than she would normally go for, but she wasn’t feeling particularly diplomatic.

“That is fair enough,” said Dan, and then he patted her on the shoulder. “Go sit in the bath. I’ll get the water ready.”

She did as he asked, because sometimes it was easier to follow orders than to actually have to think.

 

* * *

 

Her house was eerily quiet, although she couldn’t put her finger on why. She sat in the tin bath in front of the fire, which was full of water that had been heated in her fireplace. The room looked strangely empty, too - some part of her mind said it should have been louder, more full of… something. But that couldn’t be true - before Dan had come to stay with her, she’d been the only living thing in her house, hadn’t she? 

There was some great loss at the back of her mind - some essential part of her _self_ seemed to be missing - but she didn’t know what it was. The terror of that was banging at the metaphorical door in the corners of her mind, but there were too many other metaphorical walls between it and Holly. 

_Why is it so quiet?_

She glanced around, and she squinted at the bare room. Some part of her was yelling at her to _pay attention_ , that something was going on, but she didn’t know what was going on. She sighed, and she sank down into the water, trying to get her thoughts in order. 

It was like walking into a giant flock of pigeons, and trying to catch one, specific feather. Although thinking about pigeons led her mind to skitter along towards... something she didn't know how to deal with. She sighed, and she sank down into the water, letting it swirl around her. It was completely different from the muddy water that she'd almost drowned in - it was thin and wet, and it moved like... well, it moved like water. It moved like the thing it was. 

Maybe the water in the river wasn't water? But if it wasn't water, what was it?

Her stomach sank, down towards the bottom of the tub, and she shuddered, and let the sensation of the water slipping into her ears, lapping at her eyelids, making her hair float around her head like seaweed. 

There was something deeply, terribly wrong with the world, but she would deal with that later. When she came out of the bath. 

 

* * *

 

Holly came out of the bath, wrapped in a robe, and found Dan standing in the middle of her parlor, looking confused. "Am I imagining things," he said, "or is it very quiet in here?"

"It's always been quiet in here," Holly said. She pulled the robe tighter around herself, the fabric warm and soft against her. "I like the quiet." 

Was that true? 

"I'm sorry I ruin your quiet," Dan said. 

"Don't be sorry," said Holly, and she opened her arms, so that he could press closer. She pressed her face into his neck, and she smelled smoke, and himself. It almost covered up the stink of the air outside. At least it didn't smell as strongly out here, although the smell was still... there. Muted, but there.

"It's odd feeling your breath," Dan murmured, and his voice rumbled through his chest, resonating through his ribs and vibrating along her skin. 

"Did you think I didn't breathe?" She blinked, and he squirmed as her eyelashes brushed against his skin. 

"No, no, I knew you could breathe," he said, and one of his hands went up her back, pressing between her shoulder blades, wrinkling the fabric of her bath robe. "But feeling it is odd. It's like actually _seeing_ the sun move, versus just knowing it's moving."

"Oh," said Holly. "I suppose that makes sense."

"You have a nice face," Dan said, and his voice was quiet, shy. "If... if that's not a weird thing to say."

"I mean," Holly said, "you're the first person who's seen my face in a long time." She cleared her throat, and she held onto his shirt. "Is the body -"

"And your clothes," said Dan. "They're all burning. I, uh... I found an empty old vase, I put the ashes in it."

"Thank you," Holly said, and she meant it from the bottom of her heart. 

He kissed the bridge of his nose, and he grinned at her when she rolled her eyes. 

"You're silly," Holly told her.

"Someone has to be," he told her, and he shivered. "Are you okay just... eating what's here?"

"I've got food," said Holly. "Not a whole lot of it, but I do have some." She leaned against him, and she sighed. "I'm sorry for all of this."

"If it's not my fault, it isn't your fault, either," Dan said sharply. "C'mon. You're not doing this. Whatever this is."

"Right," Holly said, and then she was nuzzling her face into the collar of his shirt. "Do you want to take a bath?"

"Very much so," Dan said fervently. "I feel disgusting."

"You're as disgusting as I am," Holly told him. 

"Was," Dan corrected. "You're all clean now."

"I don't know if I'll ever feel clean again," Holly said.

Dan kissed the top of her head, pushing her hair off of her forehead. "You wanna get food ready, I'll take a bath?"

"I'm going to dump the water out first, and warm you up some," said Holly, and she missed the University, which had actual _pipes_ , that brought hot and cold running water. 

"I'll do it," Dan said, and he cupped her cheek in one big hand. There was a tiny amount of ash on his finger, and she tried not to think about it. 

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

 

* * *

They ate bread and cheese, and then they went to bed, cuddling up on her narrow mattress. They were both wearing the minimal amount of clothing - he had on his underclothes, she wore a chemise and nothing else. He kept running his fingers through her hair, and his fingertips were drawing goosebumps up and down her back. They didn’t have any candles lit - they lay in the dark together, quiet, and his heart beat steadily under her ear. 

It was good to know that he was real. It was good to know that, despite everything else, they still existed. They existed, and now it felt like they were the only people who seemed to exist in the city. And yet. 

It was a city. Cities couldn't just be two people. That wasn't how cities worked. It was quiet - the quiet seemed to press in on her, and she didn't know what was missing, but it was something vital, something vast. It was like she'd woken up without her name, except it was her name.

"We can bring the ashes to the father, tomorrow," Dan said quietly. "If you'd like to, I mean." 

"That's a good idea," Holly said. She didn't say _most of the body melted into my clothes, so it's probably a good percentage of them anyway_ but she sure thought it loudly. 

Dan sighed, and he squeezed her shoulder. "I think... I think we should go somewhere," he said, and his voice was very quiet. 

"Go where?" It felt like there was something listening to them, but that didn't make any sense, either. Who would be listening to them?

"I don't know," Dan said. "I have a cousin who's got a farm out in the mountains." 

The mountains. She didn't know much about the mountains, except that they were green and wet and lush. Such places bred disease, but she wanted to be _away_ from here. She pressed her face into Dan's neck, trying to take in the scent of him, and not whatever else it was that was floating through the air around them. His arms were solid around her, and she pressed as close to him as she could, her breath hot on his face. She would have been uncomfortable in his current position, but he didn't seem to mind.

"Holly?"

"Yeah?" 

"I've never done farming before," he said. 

"Well," said Holly, "I've worked a garden before. It can't be that different, can it?"

Dan snorted, a puff of air across the top of her head, and she shivered at the goosebumps it drew up. "Sure," he said drowsily. "So you wanna?"

_Do I want to run away from the city that I was born in, that has all of my friends, my memories, to a farm in the middle of the mountains that might not even exist, with a man that I've known for maybe three days?_

"Yes," said Holly. "Yes, I do." 

"We can start planning tomorrow," said Dan. "Since, uh... since."

"Since?"

"I don't know," Dan said, and his voice was very quiet. He sounded like he was trying not to cry. "I feel like there's something I'm forgetting, but there isn't even a space where it _might_ have been. There's just... nothing."

"Right," said Holly. It sounded a bit like her own feelings, but also... not. He wasn't describing the aching emptiness that seemed to yank at her, like the tide of a river. The tide of the river outside. She could hear the wet sounds the river was making outside, and her heart leaped into her throat, although she didn't know why. She pressed closer to him, clutching at his chest, and he made a soothing noise. 

"Nothing out there can get us here," said Dan, and that was a lie, and they both _knew_ it was a lie, but there wasn't anything that they could do, if whatever was in the river came to bother them. 

He shuddered against her, and there was some comfort in knowing that he was just as afraid as she was. At least they were together, like two rabbits huddled in a burrow, waiting for a fox to go by. 

She fell asleep with that thought in her head, clutching at him like a lifeline.

 

* * *

 

Holly was woken up by Dan shaking her. She squinted at him in the dimness, and his face looked... scared.

"Something is... something is _happening_ ," Dan said, and there was another dark, animal terror in the back of his voice, like he was trying to escape from... _something_. "We need to get out."

"What?" Holly blinked at him, squinting in the darkness. She was still getting used to looking at his face without the protection of her mask. 

"Out," Dan repeated. "Something is... something is happening, _please_!" He was standing up, and he was getting dressed, tripping around the small room, pulling his shirt on, then wriggling into his breeches. "Get dressed."

Holly sat up, running a hand through her hair, which made it stand on end. "What's going on, Dan?" 

"There's... there's something wrong," he said, and to her surprise, he was reaching into her closet, taking out a few of her dresses and tossing them at her. "C'mon. Get dressed. Pack a bag."

"Why?" 

"Something is... I can..." Dan made a vague hand motion, waving them around as if he was trying to get his thoughts in the right order. 

 

“You can?” She stood up, and she lit a candle, blinking in the flickering light. 

“Please,” Dan said, and the panic in his voice was like an infection - hot, wet, and sliding through her veins like a burglar through an alley. “Please, trust me, we have to… we need to go.”

It made no sense to listen to him, but it made no sense to go, either. If he was this agitated… well, she didn’t want to distress him any further. She could tell, in some distant way, that she was beginning to pick up on his panic, and... no. No, that wasn’t a thing that she was going to engage in, either. She let herself breathe, and she stood up. “Where are we going?” 

The look Dan shot her was so full of gratitude that it was pathetic. She tried not to recoil from it, instead concentrating on lacing her corset up. “We’re going to go to my cousin’s farm,” he said, and he came up behind her, easily tying the laces up.

She’d have to ask him some time how he managed to be so good with corset laces. Later. His urgency was hitting her now, and she was pulling her stockings on, lacing up her boots. She shoved a few dresses into a suitcase, grabbed her doctor’s bag and crammed it full of as many remedies and ingredients as she could fit. It was like there was someone in the back of her head, telling her to _run escape get away now now now_ \- it felt like the same kind of impulse that made her yank her hand off of a hot stove. It was just _there_.

“I’ve got food,” Dan said, coming in from the next room, shoving bread and cheese into a bag. “Are you ready to go?”

“Where are we going?” Holly tied the last knots on her boots, and grabbed her stick. She might not have her mask anymore, but she was still enough of a Plague Doctor to keep her stick about. 

“My cousin’s place, in the mountains,” Dan said, and he took the suitcase from her hand. “Shall we?”

Holly looked around her empty rooms, trying to figure out what it was that was missing - because _something_ was missing, even if she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. 

“Right,” Holly said. “Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

The sky was dark, and the air stank like a slaughterhouse, as they made their way out of the house like a pair of fugitives in the night. She held her stick under her arm, her doctor’s bag in her hand. Her other hand was clutching his, and he held the suitcase, the bag with the food over his shoulder. They weren’t walking in any particular direction - they followed along the river bank. If it could be called a river anymore - it seemed more like the river was full of mud, not moving, just… staying there. Almost like a plowed field, except not, because it was long and winding, looping over itself. 

_It’s like a vein_ , she thought, _except what would be big enough to need veins that big_? 

The ground under their feet was squelching, and they sank about an inch with every step - then two inches, as they began to move faster. They were practically running when they reached the city gates, which were wide open, gaping like like the mouth of a corpse.

“I forgot to bring him the ashes,” Holly said quietly - the first words she’d spoken since they’d left the house. The air outside of the city was a little bit clearer - she hadn’t realized how much the miasma had been surrounding her. She held her breath was they passed through the gates, although she wasn’t sure why - she’d left the city before. 

The ground was still soft and sticky under their shoes, but it began to get firmer, as they got farther away from the great corpse. 

“The ashes?” Dan was holding on to her fingers so tightly that they were beginning to go numb.

“For the baby,” said Holly. “I promised him the baby’s ashes.”

“We’ll go back from them, when things calm down,” Dan said. He was lying. She knew he was lying, he knew she knew he was lying. 

“Right,” said Holly, and they kept walking together.

The moon was very bright over them, almost supernaturally bright, and Holly didn’t know if she was spooked by it, or grateful. They were walking down a long, wide road, rutted from wheels, and it was empty. Empty and silent - nothing moved in the bushes, nothing made any noises from the trees, nothing. They were on a broad, empty plane, and Holly’s senses were on alert.

Nothing sprang at them, but there was the eerie sensation of being watched.

 

* * *

 

They walked until Holly’s feet hurt, until the sun was beginning to come up. They walked in silence, following the road, and by the time the light had gone from silvery to grey, some of the terror had subsided. 

Holly looked over at Dan, and found him disheveled, but wearing a relieved expression. “I think we’re safe,” Dan said quietly.

Holly looked around them, and she licked her lips. “You think?” They were still very exposed - she didn’t like all this empty space.

“I think so,” he said. “And we can reach my cousin’s place if we keep going this way, until we hit the forest.” 

“Right,” said Holly. She looked over her shoulder, and then she stopped. She turned around, and she stared.

The city was in the distance, only she squinted, and it wasn’t a city. It was the body of some great… thing. A beast? A person? She’d blink, and the form would change, and she wouldn’t be able to remember what it was, except that it hadn’t been that before. It was rotting, whatever it was. She knew the signs of decay intimately by now, even if she’d never seen it on this scale before. 

Dan stood next to her, and he was holding her hand, the two of them staring in wonder or terror or… something. 

It was big enough that it was the landscape. It was the city, sparse buildings dotted along the rolling hills… but it also _wasn’t_ \- it was also something else. It was alive. Or it had been, at one point. It wasn’t anymore. This far away, the air was clear, and she could see the… everything, melting off of it. It was like any other rotting body, except it wasn’t, because it was also part of the city. Holly had once seen someone wind a watch too tightly, and then it had burst, and the little springs had all gone off into the corners of the room. One of the little springs that kept her own mind going sprang off into the unknown, and she looked away, looked down at her feet, then turned around towards the mountains. 

The city was alive. Or had been alive. And now it wasn’t. 

Maybe, if she was a better doctor, she might have been able to heal it. 

She turned her face towards the mountain, and she blinked, and just for a moment, it was the shape of a body, lying on its side. Then it was a mountain again, and she shivered, and looked over at Dan. 

“So,” Holly said, “your cousin’s farm?” 

“My cousin’s farm,” Dan agreed. 

Hand in hand, they began to walk down the road.

**Author's Note:**

> The ever lovely Rose did some equally lovely art for this piece, and it can be found here - https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/locusrose/185327519357#


End file.
